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" Daddy" (Sylvia Plath)
"Daddy" is a poem written by American confessional poet Sylvia Plath. The poem
was written on October 12, 1962, four months before her death and one month after
her separation from Ted Hughes. It was published posthumously in Ariel during
1965[1] alongside many other of her poems leading up to her death such as "Tulips”
and "Lady Lazarus."
"Daddy" employs controversial metaphors of the Holocaust to explain Plath's
complex relationship with her father, Otto Plath, who died shortly after her eighth
birthday as a result of undiagnosed diabetes
The father is seen as a black shoe, a bag full of God, a cold marble statue, a Nazi,
a swastika, a fascist, a sadistic brute, and a vampire. The girl (narrator, speaker) is
obsessed and maddened by her idolization of this man.
Daddy
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.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
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
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Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
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But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
Summary
Stanza 1: A first line repeated, a declaration of intent, the first sounds of oo—this is the train
setting off on its final death march. The black shoe is a metaphor for the father. Inside,
trapped for 30 years, is the narrator, about to escape.
Stanza 2: But she can only free herself by killing her "daddy," who does resemble the poet's
actual father, Otto, who died when she was 8. His toe turned black from gangrene. He
eventually had to have his leg amputated due to complications of diabetes. When young
Plath heard this news, she said, "I'll never speak to God again." Here, the bizarre, surreal
imagery builds up—his toe is as big as a seal, and the grotesque image of her father has
fallen like a statue.
Stanza 3: The personal weaves in and out of the allegory. The statue's head is in the
Atlantic, on the coast at Nauset Beach, Cape Cod, where the Plath family used to holiday.
The father icon stretches across the USA. The imagery is temporarily beautiful: bean green
over blue water. The speaker says she used to pray to get her father back, restored to health.
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Stanza 4: 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, a common name, 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.
Stanza 5: Again, the narrator addresses the father as you, a direct address which brings the
reader closer to the action. I never could talk to you seems to come right from the daughter's
heart. Plath is hinting at a lack of communication, instability and paralysis. Note the use of
the line endings two, you, and you—the train building up momentum.
Stanza 6: The use of barb wire snare ratchets up the tension. The narrator is in pain for the
first time. The German ich (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.
Stanza 7: As the steam engine chugs on, the narrator reveals that this is no ordinary train
she is on. It is a death train taking her off to a concentration camp, one of the Nazi death
factories where millions of Jews were cruelly gassed and cremated during World War II.
The narrator now identifies fully with the Jews.
Stanza 8: Moving on into Austria, the country where Plath's mother was born, the
narrator reinforces her identity—she is a bit of a Jew because she carries a Taroc (Tarot)
pack of cards and has gypsy blood in her. Perhaps she is a fortune teller able to predict the
fate of people? Plath was keenly interested in the Tarot card symbols. Some believe that
certain poems in her book Ariel use similar occult symbology.
Stanza 9: Although Plath's father was never a Nazi in real life, her narrator again focuses on
the second world war and the image of the Nazi soldier. Part nonsense nursery rhyme, part
dark lyrical attack, the girl describes the ideal Aryan male. One of the aims of the Nazis was
to breed out unwanted genetic strains to produce the perfect German, an Aryan. This one
happens to speak gobbledygoo, a play on the word gobbledygook, meaning excessive use of
technical terms. The Luftwaffe is the German air force. Panzer is the name for the German
tank corps.
Stanza 10: 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.
Stanza 11: Perhaps the most personal of stanzas. This image breaks through into the
poem, and the reader is taken into a kind of classroom (her father Otto was a teacher) where
daddy stands. The devil is supposed to have a cleft foot, but here, he has a cleft chin. The
narrator isn't fooled.
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Stanza 12: She knows that this is the man who tore her apart, reached inside, and left her
split, a divided self. Sylvia's father died when she was 8, filling her with rage against God.
And at 20, Plath attempted suicide for the first time. Did she want to re-unite with her
father?
Stanza 13: A crucial stanza, where the girl 'creates' male number two, based on the father.
The narrator is pulled out of the sack, and 'they' stick her back together with glue. Bones
out of a sack—Sylvia Plath was 'glued' back together by doctors after she failed her suicide
attempt but was never the same again. In the poem, this suicide attempt is a catalyst for
action. The girl creates a model (a voodoo-like doll?), a version of her father. This replica
strongly resembles Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. He has a Meinkampf look (Mein Kampf is
the title of Adolf Hitler's book, which means my struggle) and is not averse to torture.
Stanza 14: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were married, hence the line with I do, I do. The
speaker addresses daddy again, for the last time. There'll be no more communication, no
voices from the past. Note the emphasis on "black" again. This telephone belongs to the
father.
Stanza 15: The penultimate five lines. The speaker has achieved her double killing, both
father and husband have been dispatched. The latter is referred to as a vampire who has
been drinking her blood for seven years. It's as if the narrator is reassuring her father that
all is well now. He can lie back in readiness. For what?
Stanza 16: The father's fat black heart is pierced by a wooden stake, just like a vampire, and
the villagers are thoroughly happy about it. A bit of a bizarre image to end on. But, just
who are the villagers? Are they the inhabitants of a village in the allegory, or are they a
collective of Sylvia Plath's imagination? Either way, the father's demise has them dancing
and stamping on him almost jovially. To put the lid on things, the girl declares daddy a
bastard. The exorcism is over, and the conflict resolved.
