Daddy by Sylvia Plath: An Explication

At first glance, Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" seems like the ranting of an adolescent breaking away from an oppressive parent.

In fact, on one level, this poem is a poetic tirade directed at a father who is the source of considerable pain, but Plath has loftier goals than adolescent angst for this poem. The narrator in "Daddy" is actually a 30-year-old woman and presumably the voice of Sylvia Plath. This poem, like much of Plath's poetry, is autobiographical. In fact, Ariel,1 the collection that includes "Daddy," is an autobiographical collection of poetry that describes Plath's life leading up to her suicide. In "Daddy" she attempts to connect the intensely personal suffering of a woman (Plath) who never recovered from the death of her father to a more universal suffering, whether it's between father and daughter, husband and wife or tyrant and captive.

The poem opens...
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