“And the language obscene / An engine, and engine / Chuffing me off like a Jew’ (lines 30-32)This quote depicts the relationship that Plath had with her father. In Daddy, Plath depicts herself as a victim, as she compares herself to a Jew and her father as a Nazi. She uses this train metaphor to depict herself as a victimized Jew who is being taken away to a concentration camp. Plath uses allusions to describe her father as Hitler, as it is written “And your neat moustache / And your Aryan eyes, bright blue”.
This use of allusion gives her father the image of Hitler himself and it helps build the metaphor of her father as a Nazi. As the poem progresses, Plath becomes more blunt where she depicts her father as a Nazi. She uses the metaphor of her father not being like God, but rather like a Swastika which is the symbol of Nazism. “Not God, but a swastika / So black no sky could squeak through”. (lines 6-7) Plath’s use of metaphors helps give the reader a clear image of her relationship with her father and her hatred towards him.
We also get deeper insight into the type of relationship, or rather lack of relationship between the two. In Sylvia’s Plath poem, “Daddy’, the speaker, presumably Plath, describes her victimized relationship with the prominent male fgures in her life, her father and her husband, through historical allusions, mocking diction, and figurative language that emphasize her resentment and angry outlook towards men. Plath uses figurative language to reveal her relationship with her father. In this poem, Plath uses the symbol of a vampire to describe her father’s personality.
At the nd of the poem Plath shifts the depiction of her father from a living Nazi to a dead vampire. “The vampire who said he was you / And Drank my blood for years” (lines 32-33). Here Plath bluntly calls her father a vampire who has sucked her blood for years. The metaphor of a blood sucking vampire is used to help paint a vivid image of the pain in Plath’s relationship. Plath again describes her father as a vampire who has died with a stake through his heart. “There’s a stake in your fat black heart / And the villagers never liked you. / They are dancing and stamping on you” (36-38) .
Along with showing the father dying a vampire’s death, the metaphoric villagers dancing are used to represent the emotions felt by Plath, as she knew he was a vampire and now she is celebrating his death. The symbolism of the father as a blood sucking monster helps the reader to understand the relationship of her and her father more deeply. By analyzing Plath’s use of figurative language we can see a much deeper significance to her poem. We see how she depicted her father as a cruel person through fgurative language, mainly through metaphors and symbols.
In this poem, Daddy, Plath uses historical allusions, mocking diction, and figurative language to convey her feelings about father, mainly. Using fgurative language, she helps depict the communication problems between her and her father. In the poem, Plath reveals that she could never talk to her father. “l never could talk to you / the tongue stuck in my Jaw. / It’s stuck in a barb wire snare” (lines 24-26). This metaphor shows of her tongue being stuck in a snare shows Plath was trying desperately to talk shows the reader her deep resentment towards her father.
