Daddy

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1964

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

The poem features quintains, or 5-line stanzas. Like many of the poems in the Ariel collection, including “Mary’s Song” with tercets and “Edge” with couplets, “Daddy” contains a consistent number of lines per stanza. Unlike the consistent form, the meter and rhyme scheme are irregular. The English and occasional German words at the end of the lines that rhyme all end with “oo,” including “Achoo” (Line 5) and “du” (Line 15). Off-rhyme is also sometimes present with words like “foot” (Line 3). The sound of “oo,” or “ew,” feels like disgust is in the speaker’s mouth as she spits out each word at her father. The irregular with the regular regarding the form and meter relate to the thematic contrasts in the content of the poem between life and death and idolatry vs. condemnation, just to name a few.

Extended Metaphor

Alluding to the events of the Holocaust allows Plath to start with a simile and then move into a metaphor that she extends throughout the poem. Plath begins with German references in Stanza 3, but in Stanza 6 she states,” I thought every German was you” (Line 29). At this point, she is more literal than figurative given that her father was actually from Germany. In Stanza 7, she sets up the contrast between her (oppressed) and her father (oppressor) when she composes the simile, “Chuffing me off like a Jew” (Line 32). At the end of Stanza 7, she sheds the “like” and directly states, “I think I may well be a Jew” (Line 35). She continues to add details to make the comparison even more obvious and the tone even more haunting. In Stanza 9, she mentions his “neat moustache” (Line 43) and “Aryan eye” (Line 44), and in Stanza 10, she mentions him as “Not God but a swastika” (Line 46). In Stanza 13, she tops it all off with her father’s “Meinkampf look” (Line 65). Even though Plath wrote this poem less than twenty years after the end of World War II and Adolf Hitler’s suicide, the historical event is still clear for readers decades later.

Repetition

Plath uses repetition for phrases within one line or in separate stanzas. Right at the top of the poem, Plath begins with a direct address that has a reprimanding tone: “You do not do, you do not do” (Line 1). She repeats this line in Stanza 14 but in the first-person as an affirmative, signaling wedding vows: “And I said, I do, I do” (Line 67). Repetition can create a memorable effect and recitable lines for the readers, and this effect is nowhere clearer than when she finally decides to break free from the painful memory of her father. In Stanza 14, she confidently writes, “So daddy, I’m finally through” (Line 68), while evoking the image of a landline phone ripped from its cord. In case she or the readers are not convinced, Plath repeats this line, with dramatic variation, as the final line of the poem: “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (Line 80). Sometimes, Plath repeats not just specific phrases but concepts, as if she is thinking out loud as she determines her identity and subsequent emotions. For example, in Stanza 7, Plath writes, “I began to talk like a Jew/I think I may well be a Jew” (Lines 34-35).