Critical Analysis of Sylvia Plath's "daddy"

Critical Analysis of Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"

Sylvia Plath uses her poem, "Daddy", to express intense emotions towards her father's life and death and her disastrous relationship with her husband. The speaker in this poem is Sylvia Plath who has lost her father at age ten, at a time when she still adored him unconditionally. Then she gradually realizes the oppressing dominance of her father, and compares him to a Nazi, a devil, and a vampire. Later, the conflict of this relationship continues with her husband which led to a short and painful marriage. In "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, the author illustrates her feelings of anger and resentment towards her father and husband along with being oppressed for most of her life through her poetic devices of vivid metaphor, imagery, rhyme, tone, and simile.

Metaphor plays a major role in this poem because strong metaphors are conveyed throughout the poem though shoes and feet are a recurrent image in this poem; they take on different nuances of meaning as the poem proceeds. In line two, the speaker compares herself to a foot that "lives" in a shoe, the shoe is her father. Analyzing this metaphor on an abstract level is much less helpful than visualizing it. Then the metaphor evokes various helpful associations: Commonly, a shoe protects the foot and keeps it warm, in this poem.