poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

This has to be one of my favorite poems by her. She felt oppressed by her father, yet she married a man that embodied most of the same characteristics he did...her continual references to her father as being a Nazi strike me as rather odd...not sure if she just means his heritage, or the way he acted...or possibly both. But, I have to say that my favorite line had to be the last one...

The first eight stanzas are about her father, and the last eight are about her husband. And I agree with GG on the concept of choosing a husband who exhibited the same characteristics she disliked in her father. The last line is awesome, too, although I think there's another meaning behind that too: she killed herself shortly afterward, which makes the statement not so much of a feminine power statement but almost an I-give-up kind of thing. I'm not saying she surrendered here, but she was through dealing with all these recurring themes of her life, with the bad men she lived with. So she was done with them, as she was about to kill herself. Just some more food for thought! :)

I have often wondered how life continues for those associated with true atrocity. Be this Sylvia's truth or her metaphor it speaks worlds about life in the shadow of badly placed beliefs.

What is interesting about 'Daddy' is that Plath is resentful and bitter towards her father whereas in 'The Bell Jar' there is more of a sense that she missed out and in one part wants to start tending his grave to make up for the "years of neglect" to it. She also seems to block her father out; when asked about studying German she describes her "mind shutting like a clam" at the "very sight of those black barbed wire letter" (in reference to a German book). In 'Daddy' Plath seems to have gained more agreesive and disturbing feelings towards her father. As other comments have said the poem also appears to be about Ted Hughes - "every women adores a facist", perhaps Plaths bitterness towards her father only really surfaced after realising that she had married someone like him (Ted Hughes). Therefore, 'The Bell Jar' seems to give a more innocent and confused veiw of her father whilst 'Daddy' expresses extreme resentment possibly because Plath believes he drove her to marry someone exactly like him.

Sylvia Plath has a tendency to blame others for the life she has received. In the Bell Jar, she emphasizes the longing to be near her father that she feels, while in this poem, after finding herself married to a man supposedly embodying her father's characteristics, she blames him, as if he could be to blame, even though he had long been dead.

I think the poem is very disturbing. She has compared her father to a German, and compared herself to a Jew. From my understanding she sounds as if she is saying that her father rapped her. For someone to write such a disturbing poem it is hard to believe that they didn't figure out that she was depressed.

i so think that in the poem the girl is hitlars daughter/ son im mean she haes her dad she says she thinks shes a jew (jews hate hitlar) he has blue eyes a perfect moustache she thinks every german is him think about.

Actually, if you had any knowledge or love for the art of poetry you would realize that Sylvia Plath was in fact depressed and suicidal.
This is a work of a genious and her aggresions toward her father is clearly retaliations of oppression as a child. Now she has married the man that displays these same traits and she is truly angry, for the natural palimpsets (figuratively) truly displace her love for the hobby that she slightly implied. Any poetic lover would realize these implications and would not comment so rudely.

was wondering if anyone else had any other comments on what they think this poem relates to...
im writing my esasay on how i believe it relates to Abuse.

Plath is a great writer. I love this poem. The fact that Plath relates her husband to her father intrigues me. She finds nazi-like similarities between the two. She killed herself at a very young age- her husband published a collection of her poems afterward. It's ironic that he didn't help her until she was gone.