Daddy by Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You --
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
AS Level Literature students, in the comments section please write an analysis of the imagery in the above stanzas based on the discussions we had in class. (Word limit 300 words)
26 comments:
As we discussed in class, this poem was Sylvia Plath's catharsis. So it's safe to say that this poem was filled with dark emotions, negative ones.
The first image is that of the "black shoe". The black colour is one that we associate with hatred, darkness and negativity: nightmares, terror, and seclusion in Plath's case. The memory of her father in which she lived in like a "foot" trapped in a shoe was never a pleasant one. For thirty years, she'd been suffocated by this memory of her dead father which eventually led her to feel oppressed; she had no freedom to live. She is also a "poor and white" foot, indicating her helplessness and loss of direction. Interesting here is the contrast between “black” and white”. Plath believed herself to be a white undiscovered light that had been deprived from shining for so long thanks to the memory of her father that controlled her life and destroyed her.
The second stanza’s main imagery is all of war. She starts by describing her father’s physical appearance which interestingly resembles Hitler’s: The “Neat mustache”, however this also applies for army men in general. She calls her father a “panzer man”. Most known about tanks they are impossible to destroy. Plath’s father was, thus, inaccessible to her, with his emotions shut all the time. As a child she was constantly scared of him.
In utter distaste, she calls him a “black swastika”: probably the most hate filled image in the poem. The swastika marks the atrocities of the Nazi war. Hence to refer to someone as a swastika is to express profound hatred towards them. But also, her father was a “black swastika” that “no sky could squeak through”. The colour black as in the “shoe” image expresses all the negative emotions that possessed her when she thought of her father. But this particular image was to imply that this black, horrendous memory of her dead father was her cocoon. She saw no light or happiness in her life because of this memory that surrounded her.
I'd elaborate more but I already passed the word limit I think.
I really love how she associated sounds, for example "achoo" , great poem!
interesting poem...the author sylvia covers up her sadness and horror that surrounds her relationship with her father with flippancy and humour...
Thus the "achoo"... and the ridiculing of his apperance in subtle words like "neat moustache" or "panzer man" ....etc
This poem also shows the author's fear and dislike for her father... but which she hides behind this poetic ridicule!!!!
Sylvia Plath lost her father at the age of eight. The poem is about how she suffered after his death for thirty years. The imagery of this poem is dark and negative.
In the first stanza she refers to her father as a "black shoe". Black represents darkness, negativity and fear. On the other hand she has described herself as "poor and white". White represents purity and innocence. This is a contrast between black and white. She has been trapped in the memories of her father for thirty years. "Barely daring to breahte and achoo" indicates that she has been suffocated in her father's memory and feels opressed.
The second stanza is filled war imagery. She has described her father as an army man. She describes how she was scared him and his "luftwaffe", "neat mustache" and "Aryan eye". She also refers to him as "panzer-man". She also calls him a "swastika". This shows the bitterness she has towards him as it is a sign of war. Her father is not only a swastika but he is "a swastika so black no sky could squeak through". These are extreme negative memories which she has of her father.
In the third stanza she has compared her father to a devil. In the picture or the memory she has of her fahter, he stands "at the blackboard". This portrays him like a strict teacher. She suggests that his cleft is in his chin rather than foot but he is no less than a devil. Devils are associated with evil. Such unpleasant memories of her father makes her compare him with such an evil creature. She then refers to him as a "black man", again associated with evil and cruelty.
Black has a negative image here as she has used "black shoe", "a swastika so black" and "black man" so describe her father. Her child-like vocabulary like "daddy", "achoo", "panzer-man" and "gobbledygoo" suggests that she has not been able to come out of her eight year old phase, the time her father died. She has portrayed her father as the offender and herself as the victom.
I loved the poem..it was really expressive.
Aisha Bashir
10g2
It was great…very evocative.
I especially loved this line “So black no sky could squeak through.”
I think that the writer is trying to express hate towards her father by saying "Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through." By comparing him to, in my opinion, the greatest evil of all, the Nazis. She not only compares him to the Nazis but calls him a black swastika. Black is usually associated to things like death and shadows. So she says calls her father the ultimtae evil because he left her to live in sadness.
The writer feels like her heart has been smashed into a million pieces by saying."Bit my pretty red heart in two". So she had a lot of love in her heart before her father died by saying that her heart was red. Red is associated with love ,warmth and protection. And by saying that her father broke her heart, he had taken away her love and ability to cope with life thus making her extremely depressed and suicidal.
P.S This is from Nnamdi, because I forgot my password and yoan was kind enough to help me out, until i get a new account. :)
..continuing from class :)
She sees her father as a figure for complete evil and she is full of anger and resentment towards him. "So black no sky could squeak through" Black is often referred to as being full of evil and depression, as well as being associated with death. She's saying that he's so full of evil, not even one bit of light from the sky could 'squeak' through.
She believes in a way that her father abandoned her, just to spite her and hurt her. "Bit my pretty red heart in two" Pretty is often used to describe childish things, so she is indicating at how old she was when he left her. A broken heart is often symbolized as being split in two. When you bite into something, you leave small fragments missing from the whole piece, he tore her apart. She's saying that when he deserted her, he broke her 'pretty little heart' into little pieces. Her grief is very obvious and overcoming.
Rachel
The writer is referring to her dad as an evil person who ruined her happiness when she says "But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who."
Black is a colour generally associated with negative images like evil, cruel, selfish, etc. So she thinks her father was an evil character in general.
Aisha Bashir
10g2
This easily convays the amount of both emotional and physical pain it cause Slyvia Plath to lose her father at such a young age.
"bit my pretty red heart in two".
She feels as though he has left a gaping hole in not just her chest but her whole world. She resents him for causing her so much pain and ripping, tearing and biting her heart into little pieces.
Hope this is an ok analysis :)
Dylan
Sh has a really strong feeling of forgotteness and lonelyness by saying "In which I have lived like a foot " feet are usually the forgotten part on your body so she is refering herself to a foot.
After doing some research on Sylvia Plath, I found that her father, Otto, died when she was 8 and a half years of age.
The second stanza of the poem depicts the violence in her father's life. Luftwaffe is another word for the Swiss army. Neat mustache signifying that he was a tight, upright kind of man who you could imagine walking around with a cane in hand. Aryan eyes that are bright blue, refers to the 'Aryans' who were known for their good looks and piercing eyes. Panzer indicates the tankers used in war, her father, being the man controlling the tanks. God is normally associated with good, and the swastika, a symbol of hate, antisemitism, violence, death, and murder (unlike other meanings of representation of life, sun, power, strength, and good luck). And again, black, symbolising evil, restriction, hate etc. Her father was a professor of Biology.
And she remembers him in his post of a teacher, at the blackboard.
Many words used by the poet signify her childness coming back when she talks about her "daddy" for example, "Achoo" or "Gobbledygoo" or the name of the poem itself! Even the very last line, "Bit my pretty redd heart in two" shows her child like thinking, even when she accuses him of breaking her heart by leaving her and her mother alone in the world without 'the' fatherly figure in the house.
She has such negative memories of her father.
In the second stanza she describes her father as a extremely vice man by using a lot of different hate filled images. She portrays her father as “Not God but a swastika, So black no sky could squeak through” (The swastika was the official emblem of the evil Nazi party).
Sky is related to the words peace, happiness, and especially freedom and she says that he was so vile, so dark that she didn’t get any freedom or happiness at all.
Sylvia Plath writes that she loves her father more then anyone could love theirs but she still calls him a devil and blames him for his death when she says *‘but no less a devil for that’*. Sylvia portrays him as a devil and a devil is something that haunts you, demeans you, scares you and frightens you. And no matter how much a person would want it to go away it will still be there with you forever. You also would feel shame because it causes you to do things you usually don’t do, and maybe it’s the same with Sylvia. She’s haunted from her fathers memories like a devil haunts a human, and as a devil makes people do things they usually wouldn’t do, her father made her do things she wouldn’t have done if he didn’t leave. She lived in a trapped world with nothing to do but cry over her father’s death and blame it on him and call him a devil.
To start with I just want to correct Priyanka there because the Luftwaffe was not the Swiss Army but the German Airforce. The same airforce who launched deadly raids upon civillians in WWII devastating the cities of Britain- i.e: Fearful.
The poet again creates a sense that she is telling us to imagine her as a child: innocent, helpless and bewildered. The lines "Any less the black man who bit my pretty red heart in two" overflow with contrast between her and her father, her depression and her anger towards him. She envisions her "pretty red heart", which has been broken by the "black man", her father who she is obviously upset with when she uses the word "black". Used in this context I feel she wants the word "black" to portray her father as an wicked, cruel and evil man.
In the second paragraph, Sylvia Plath has described her father as Hitler, the most vicious dictator in history, by describing him as having a 'neat mustache' and 'Aryan eye, bright blue'. This suggests that she believed her father to be the villain of her life, the one who dictated her every move, her every thought for 20 long, dark years.
His nefarious image is reinforced by the words 'the black man who, Bit my pretty red heart in two.' The world 'black' portrays the man, her father, in a very negative light. It creates an image of someone evil and hateful. She depicts herself in a helpless demeanour, like that of an innocent little girl. Her childlike words 'my pretty red heart' further emphasizes her feeling of self-pity.
word*
Sylvia Plath tells us that her father was a great cause of misery and depression in her life. She writes, ‘So black no sky could squeak through.’ which portrays a feeling of being caged in sorrow with no happiness being able to reach her. She felt trapped with no escape, no hope, no joy just an unending sadness.
In the next stanza she elaborates about her father and what she thought of him. She says, ‘A cleft in your chin instead of your foot, but no less a devil for that.’ This shows how much she disliked her father; so much that she called him a devil. She thought of him as a symbol of evil, nothing but a mean, monstrous, wicked man!
slyvia plath indicates her agony and frustration over the memories of her father that has been haunting her.
in her second paragraph potrays the fear she has towards her father's memories when she says "I have always been scared of you..." she puts herself in the place of a jew being terrified by a german soldier who is in control.
the color "black" is often used in this poem to depict her sorrow, hatred and frustration and potrays her father as a "devil".
The poet, Sylvia Path, refers to her father as "Not god, but a swastika", in the second stanza. Swastika being the emblem of the Nazi party, she compares her father to a malicious, strong man whom she fears - such as Hitler. She describes her father as someone who enclosed upon her, and suffocated her until she could no longer live a happy life.
She further brings out her distaste for her father by portraying him as a "black man". Black, being a word of negativity, hate and depression, accentuates the anger and aversion she feels towards her father. The writer uses childish words and phrases such as "goobledeygoo", "achoo" and "pretty red heart" in the poem, which enunciates the young age at which she lost her father.
The authors hate for her father becomes even more obvious, when she compares his destructive ways to a heavy-duty, war machine when she says 'Panzer-man, panzer man, O You.'
This clearly suggests how she remembers her father as an annihilative weapon and how it arose a sense of dread beneath her. This also signifies how her father was capable of destroying a great deal,in this context probably her entire life, that too with perfect precision.
Once again, the author tries to convince us of her father's atrocities when she refers to him as 'the black man who bit my pretty red heart in two'. She relates her father to a cold, heartless 'black man', black being the colour usually associated with all things sinister and dark. Simultaneously, she copes with the broken heart her father's horrifying absence has left her with.
The poet shuts out all goodness of her father and tries to compare and link him to evilness, by saying 'not God but a swastika'. In this context she is referring to the swastika as the symbol of Nazism, convincing us of his wickedness, with presenting the contrasting idea of God (being goodness) opposed to the woe, her father being the latter.
In another phrase she continues to promote her father's link to the 'evil' Nazis when she writes 'and your neat mustache and your Aryan eye, bright blue'. By associating her father with the Aryans, she is trying to convey the superiority she assumed her father had, and him being a robot and perfectionist with his 'neat mustache', having no sympathy.
Sylvia Plath is trying to tell us that she has given up on trying to get over her fathers death. She has been unhappy since he passed and her sorrow simply doesn't want to continue.
She writes in her poem " The black man who bit my pretty red heart in two". This is to show that by the word black, she sees her father as a very negative figure. The word black is associated with death, evil,hate,darkness etc. She says he bit her pretty red heart in two. He hurt her, abandoned her, left her, when she was so young.
The time she needed him the most he wasn't there. I assume she is trying to tell us that she is tired of living in the shadow of her fathers death.
The poet, Sylvia Plath, attempts to show the magnitude of depression the memory of her father had on her in the lines ''Not God but a swastika, So black no sky could squeak through.''. People usually regard God as the ultimate symbol of goodness and perhaps subconsciously place God even higher above the sky. In these lines Sylvia Plath portrays her father as a swastika fuctioning as a replacement for God, hence - the ultimate symbol of evil. In the latter line she expands on the same imagery, expressing that this swastika - being a replacement for God - is as powerful as God and completely impenetrable even to the largest of skies.
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