Daddy Flashcards

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Key points

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  • Angry poem that Plath has said is about a girl with an Electra complex
  • Draws heavily on personal experience, even referencing a photo of Otto Plath
  • Powerful rhythm with frequent repetition and a nursery rhyme quality that contrasts with the dark, violent subject matter and Holocaust imagery.
  • The poem’s speaker has been enthralled by her father since childhood yet comes to realize that his legacy is one of violence and oppression.
  • The speaker’s relationship to her father’s memory can be thought of as representative of the broader power imbalance between men and women in a patriarchal society
  • The speaker then describes the oppressive shadow of her father’s memory by comparing herself to a foot that has lived inside a “black shoe … for thirty years,” too scared to even breathe. In other words, she has been completely smothered by the presence of her father, who is further described as a colossal statue, heavy as “marble” or “a bag full of God.”
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2
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Key quotations

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  • ‘I used to pray to recover you’
  • ‘I think I may well be a Jew’
  • ‘With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo’ Childish language contrasted with Nazi imagery
  • ‘Every woman adores a Fascist’
  • ‘The brute brute heart of a brute like you’
  • ‘You stand at the blackboard, daddy’
  • ‘I made a model of you’
  • ‘Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through’
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