Daddy

Question 1

Key points

Answer 1

• 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.”

Question 2

Key quotations

Answer 2

• ‘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’