Sylvia Plath's Poem, Daddy

In Sylvia Plath's memorial to her father, "Daddy," the speaker demonstrates a great hatred toward her father. Plath (p. 112) ends her poem with "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through." Despite this sentiment, it can also be seen that the poem is actually also Plath's feminist critique of the dominating, controlling and hurtful position of males in society, both fathers and husbands. Her speaker maintains she is "through" with her "daddy," but in reality the anger and animosity expressed toward her father can only stem from someone who also deeply loves their father. Plath (p. 110) uses "freakish" to define the Atlantic Ocean, an ocean that can be eerily calm or wildly turbulent. As Srivastava (p. 127) suggests, this description is "symbolic of Plath's own attitude toward her father, no hostile, no friendly." As such, "Daddy" may read like a poem of hatred but it is actually a poem born of both love and hate.

The love of the speaker for her father is barely noticeable in the poem "Daddy," except for the fact we seldom reserve such hatred for someone like the father described unless we loved them once very much. The speaker is older now and looking back at her relationship with her father. The speak of the poems tells the reader, "I never could talk to you" (Plath, p. 110). We are also told of her hatred for her father's German ancestry, one that causes her to fear her father and depict him in the worst terms, "I have always been scare of yo

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