Daddy

As part of the confessional poetry movement, this poem shows the speaker’s—presumably Plath’s—complicated and dark relationship with her actual father (“you” or “daddy”). Plath slowly unfolds references and visuals that depict the different facets of the man’s appearance and influence, building upon each description and metaphor until she reaches her breaking point in the final line with “I’m through.”

Stanza 1 immediately sets up the irregular rhyme of “oo” that pervades the poem, particularly the ending word of lines: “You do not do” (Line 1). She uses synecdoche to compare her father to a “black shoe” (Line 2) in which she has lived like a “foot” (Line 3). It’s clear from the start that this subservient, obedient feeling has been going on “for thirty years” (Line 4).

Stanza 2 first mentions the word “daddy” (Line 6) and the fact that he died before she could get past her worship of him: “You died before I had time” (Line 7). She suggests this idolatry and the idea that his presence was larger-than-life with “a bag full of God” (Line 8). She even reveals his physical stature to be large when she states that his toe was as “big as a Frisco seal” (Line 10), alluding to the giant sea lions in San Francisco. Plath was young when her professor father died, an age when a young girl may view her father as God, to be revered and, in this case, feared.

Stanza 3 continues to show her daddy’s large presence and influence over her as she compares his head to the “Atlantic” Ocean (Line 11) and how she used to “pray to recover” him (Line 14). She ends the stanza with the German expression “Ach, du” which means “Oh, you” (Line 15), signally the beginning of her references to Germany.

In Stanza 4, she explores the origins of her elusive father, who was born in Grabow, Germany. She associates his origins with “wars, wars, wars” (Line 18), alluding to World War II specifically and thus continuing the poem’s mood of death, despair, and killing.

Stanza 5 continues with her trying to understand her father’s origins while referring to the “foot” (Line 23) again, this time in reference to where her father’s foot originated. She mentions how she was unable to ask her father about his roots or even just talk to him because “the tongue stuck in [her] jaw” (Line 25).

The clear visual image of her tongue becoming “stuck in a barb wire snare” (Line 26) emphasizes the disconnect between the speaker and her father and the impossibility of having both a close connection and an intact sense of self. She tries to speak in her father’s native tongue, German, with “Ich, Ich, Ich, Ich” (Line 27), meaning “I, I, I, I,” but she seems to only stutter, as she finds the language “obscene” (Line 30). She remains frozen in a toddler-stage of stuttering speech, unable to develop beyond the trauma of her father’s violent presence and even more devastating absence.

In stanza 6, Plath compares her father to a German Nazi with herself as a Jew going to the concentration camps using this simile: “Chuffing me off like a Jew/a Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen” (Lines 32-33). In the next stanza, she extends the Nazi-Jew metaphor, discussing her father, the oppressor, as the “clear beer of Vienna” (Line 41) versus her oppressed “gypsy ancestress” (Line 43) with her “Taroc pack” (Line 44), a play on a “pack of tarot cards.”

Stanza 8 begins with a conclusive statement resulting from her examples in the previous stanzas, an approach similar to inductive reasoning, with “I have always been scared of you” (Line 46). She continues her blend of German and English to describe the Nazi-like qualities of her father, including his “neat moustache” (Line 48) and “Aryan eye” (Line 49) and his work as a “panzer-man” (Line 50), or tank driver. Despite her aptitude with language, she feels likes her father’s language is ultimately “Gobbledygoo” (Line 47).

Stanza 9 affirms that she no longer associates him with God but a “swastika” (Line 51). Plath reinforces this symbolism with her and all women’s love of “Fascist” (Line 53) men and the repetition of her father as a “brute” (Lines 54-55). She also inserts another reference to feet and footwear when she mentions “the boot in the face” (Line 54) regarding Fascists men’s typical behavior.

In stanza 10, Plath refers to a picture she has of her father teaching, which softens the previous stanza’s tone before harkening back to the darkness when she compares her daddy’s features to those of the devil: “A cleft in your chin instead of your foot” (Line 53), again solidifying the motif of the foot.

Stanza 11 shows why her “pretty red heart” (Line 56) is torn in half. It is because of two deaths: Plath’s father’s when she was 10 and her suicide attempt at age 20 when she “tried to die” (Line 58). The next stanza starts out hopeful as Plath comes “out of the sack” (Line 61) and picks up the pieces of her shattered life. She does so by making “a model of [her daddy]” (Line 59), most likely in the form of the man she marries. This new man, like her father, has a “Meinkampf look” (Line 60). “Meinkampf” translates to “my struggle,” but also references Adolf Hitler’s memoir of the same name, showing the speaker’s continued complications with men in her life.

Stanza 13 shows resolution with Plath declaring, “So, daddy, I’m finally through” (Line 63). She cuts off all communication with knowing him: “The black telephone’s off at the root” (Line 65).

In Stanza 14, she repeats the idea of killing, but this time she has a new man—or perhaps a memory—to kill. She compares this man, her husband, she has known for “seven years” (Line 69) to a “vampire who said he was you [daddy] and drank my blood for a year” (Lines 67-68). This new man is draining the life from her, suggesting she has moved from one oppressive situation to another. Since she now has a new version of her daddy in her life to contend with, she can remove the original: “Daddy, you can lie back now” (Line 70).

In the final stanza, Plath continues the vampire metaphor, mentioning the “stake in [daddy’s] fat black heart” (Line 71). She mentions that others who knew him, not just her, are celebrating his departure: “They are dancing and stamping on you” (Line 73). She finishes the poem with a firm tweaking of her resolution in Stanza 13. There is no looking back on challenging memories when she declares, “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (Line 75).