Daddy Flashcards
1
Q
Key points
A
- 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.”
2
Q
Key quotations
A
- ‘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’