Daddy Flashcards
Alienation
Felt alienated from her father as she could not talk to him
—> When she tried to talk to him her jaw was “stuck in barb wire”
—> ‘Ich, ich, ich, ich,’ -> ‘I, I, I, I’ -> failure to communicate
Loss
You died before I had time’
-> sense of frustration that she didn’t get to talk to him
—> The Nazi images show how Plath resented the death of her father and saw him as a horrible person for leaving her. She even tries to imply that she was dependent on her father who abandoned her. She was the foot and her father the black shoe, thus the black shoe she had been living in
—> She feels like she is broken and the glue did not fix her suicide “But they pulled me out of the sack And they stuck me together with glue”
Love
Describes her father as a “bag full of God”
—> Yet another metaphor—father as a swastika, the ancient Indian symbol used by the Nazis. In this instance, the swastika is so big it blacks out the entire sky. This could be a reference to the air raids over England during the war when the Luftwaffe bombed many cities and turned the sky black. Lines 48-50 are controversial but probably allude to the fact that powerful despotic males, brutes in boots, often demand the attraction of female victims.
—> “Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist”
—> Wants to reconnect with her father
—> “At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you”
–> ‘Daddy’ -> childlike, implicitly sexual
Fear
“I have always been scared of you, / With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. / And your neat mustache / And your Aryan eye, bright blue.”
The metaphor describes the speaker’s fear of her father. The metaphor compares her father to a member of the Luftwaffe, emphasizing his power and control.
The term “gobbledygoo” suggests that the speaker cannot understand her father’s language or communication, further emphasizing the divide between them.
The use of the term “Aryan eye, bright blue” suggests that the speaker associates her father with the Nazi regime, which adds to her feelings of fear and grief —> The Germanich(I) is repeated four times as if her sense of self-worth is in question (or is she recalling the father shouting I,I,I,I?).
And is she unable to speak because of the shock or just difficulty with the language? The father is seen as an all-powerful icon, representing all Germans.
Entrapment
Plath says she feels trapped in the first stanza when should the shoe of her father —>School rhyme
—> We move on to Poland and the second world war.
There’s a mix of the factual and fictional.
Otto Plath was born in Grabow, Poland, acommonname, but spoke German in a typical autocratic fashion.
This town has been razed in many wars adding strength to the idea that Germany (the father) has demolished life.
—> “In the German tongue, in the Polish town scraped flat by the roller of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend”
themes
The struggle for identity: The poem explores the speaker’s attempt to define herself in relation to her father, who has a dominating and oppressive presence in her life. The speaker grapples with the legacy of her father’s abuse and control over her, and her efforts to break free from his influence and establish her own sense of identity.
The trauma of loss: The poem is a lament for the speaker’s father, who died when she was young. The speaker’s sense of grief and abandonment is compounded by her father’s abusive behavior towards her, creating a complex and conflicted relationship with him even after his death.
The use of language as a tool for empowerment: The poem uses vivid and evocative language to express the speaker’s emotions and experiences. Through the act of writing, the speaker is able to assert her own voice and claim agency over her own story.
The struggle for self-acceptance: The poem explores the speaker’s internalized shame and self-hatred, which she attributes to her father’s abuse. The speaker’s journey towards self-acceptance is a central theme of the poem, as she confronts the legacy of her father’s abuse and seeks to redefine herself on her own terms.
The relationship between power and vulnerability: The poem explores the ways in which power and vulnerability are intertwined, particularly in the context of abusive relationships. The speaker’s father is both a figure of immense power and a source of vulnerability for her, and the poem interrogates the ways in which these two aspects of his character are linked.
Black shoe metaphor
The foot is “poor and white” because, for thirty years, it has been suffocated by the shoe and never allowed to see the light of day.
‘Chuffing me off like a Jew’
‘Chuffing’ is onomatopoeic for a train. She’s being cast off just like Jews would have been to concentration camps.
‘And get back, back, back to you’
Repetition highlights the extent of her distress and longing for suicide to get closer to her father.
Suggestive of a very disturbed, confusing relationship.
vampire imagery + black
A stake in your fat black heart
- “fat black” oxymoron suggests she understands and is perhaps greatful for his sacrifice as a father because it is fat but black as in dark and unloving
- refers to father as a vampire
- drained the joy of life from her making her depressed as a vampire sucks blood
- a stake through heart is how you kill vampires
- last stanza as she’s finally coming to terms with her relationship with her father and his death
- she is murdering the memory of him
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
- metaphor for her father being like a statue, exhibiting no emotion as she felt no love from him
- image of death and decay “ghastly”
- simile describing her father’s overbearing nature
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
opens with repetition and uses a simile of a black shoe to describe her relationship with her father
- for 30 years she felt as though she had to live in a setting where she was suffocated
- the shoe is poor and white suggesting the bad nature of the environment she was forced to stay in
