Question

any one can help me on writing about the poem "daddy" please

Answer 1

Sylvia Plath's poem, I'm assuming?

Answer 2

yes

Answer 3

form and figure of speech

Answer 4

Well, it is about many things depending on how you interpret it.

1. Comparison of her husband, Ted Hughes, to her domineering father.

2. Her own feminist journey, freeing herself from the Nazi-like oppression that these men have wrought in her mind.

She uses a lot of allusions to the Holocaust, which seems distasteful, but serves to highlight how powerless she felt around her father. However, the poem grows beyond simple daddy issues and reaches a startling conclusion at the end.

The lines "If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now." bring Ted Hughes to mind, the husband who she spent half her time raging about. By freeing herself of her father's influence, she has freed herself of her husband's, because he enslaves her in the same way.

Freeing herself from "the black telephone" aka the influence of her dead father, calling from the grave to remind her of her weakness, helps her realize how these men who seem so dominant and powerful are really vampires, draining her, getting power from her only because she allows it to happen.

Answer 5

so what would this be categorized under? tone?

Answer 6

Hmm. I hadnt seen that you wanted form and figure of speech. Let's see.. I guess tone would be reflective, angry, yet ultimately optimistic

Answer 7

did u write all that ur self? lol

Answer 8

Yeah, SP is like my favorite poet

Answer 9

lol

Answer 10

I remember first thinking she was just extremely over-dramatic about everything though

Answer 11

didnt she commit suicide in real life?

Answer 12

Yeah, she tried to every decade and succeeded at age 24 I think. She's the one who put her head in the oven.

Answer 13

imma send u my topic.. i am sooo bad in writing.. :( and its due today!! i think imma die lol

Answer 14

Haha... I'll see what I can do

Answer 15

its the first one..

Answer 16

Okay, so you have to make a claim about the poem, and support it using things like tone and figures of speech. Let's say, the poem is actually about Plath and she uses this concept of "Daddy" to illustrate her own internal strife.

Answer 17

what u wrote before i can use as symbols right?

Answer 18

So what I would do, is find 3 or 4 lines that support this, and explain what the lines mean. Explain the metaphor (like say, comparing her to a Jew, father to a Nazi). And then conclude by talking about Plath's realization and triumph over her father, and how that triumph is actually a personal triumph

Answer 19

yeah

Answer 20

From its opening image onward, that of the father as an "old shoe" in which the daughter has lived for thirty years�an explicitly phallic image, according to the writings of Freud�the sexual pull and tug is manifest, as is the degree of Plath�s mental suffering, supported by references to Dachau, Auschwitz, and Belsen. (Her references elsewhere to hanged men are also emblems of suffering; in Jungian psychology, the swinging motion would be symbolic of her ambivalent state and her unfulfilled longing as well.) Plath confesses that, after failing to escape her predicament through attempted suicide, she married a surrogate father, "a man in black with a Meinkampf look" who obligingly was just as much a vampire of her spirit�one who "drank my blood for a year, / Seven years, if you want to know." (Sylvia Plath was married to the poet Ted Hughes for seven years.) When she drives the stake through her father�s heart, she not only is exorcising the demon of her father�s memory, but metaphorically is killing her husband and all men.

This is what the online text has to say. I think it is pretty accurate, although you have to change it up to fit your essay

Answer 21

figure of speech being things like "drinking my blood" "living in an old shoe" etc

Answer 22

drinking my blood is a figure of speech, but the black telephone is a symbol?

Answer 23

can u see if this is good.. and what categorized this fall into? In the poem, she describes her German father as a Nazi, and her self as a Jew. This is a metaphor of how she feels as a victim of her father. But she doesn't go ahead and come him right out saying he's a Nazi. Instead she uses metaphors to show the reader that he is like a Nazi. For example, She uses the word "Luftwaffe" which means air force in German, and refers to the German air force of World War II. In addition, By using German, she is saying that he is connected to the german air force, not thats hes a Nazi straight out. Also, In the poem, the father starts by being like God then changes to be described at a "swastika"(638) which is the symbol of Nazism. The swastika is not just described as black its "So black no sky could squeak through"(638).

Answer 24

metephore?

Answer 25

i dont understand the difference in metephore, symbols and figure of speech.. im confusing them all..

Answer 26

Right. A symbol is an object or idea that represents something else. A Figure of speech is an idiom that means something else. For example, drinking my blood means that you are stealing my life-force, getting stronger as I get weaker. It doesn't mean that her husband literally sucked out her blood.

A black telephone, a stake, a Meinkampf look, these are all symbols.

A metaphor can be thought of as an extended comparison or analogy. It's like, Plath wants to explain that she was oppressed by her father. So the metaphor is that she was a Jew and her father a Nazi. Usually metaphors will provide an undercurrent throughout the poem - the symbols and figures of speech will usually add to the metaphor

Answer 27

Sorry have to run

Answer 28

ok thanks so mucch.. u was very helpful