DADDY
References from Sylvia Plath’s poem
Holocaust imagery – why?
• Plath was a child during WWII and saw the rise
and fall of the Nazi party
• When her father died (1942), hatred for all things
German was at a peak in the USA
• Her high school history teacher put photos of
concentration camp inmates on the walls to
disturb his students’ complacency
• As an adult she followed the trials of Nazi war
criminals like Adolf Eichmann
• This interest is reflected in several other poems
and stories, e.g. her short story ‘Superman and Paula Brown’s new
Snow Suit’ is about a young girl’s loss of innocence during WWII, her poems
‘Lady Lazarus’, ‘Mary’s Song’ and ‘Fever 103’
An excerpt from
‘Superman and Paula Brown’s new snow suit’
“That same winter, war was declared and I
remember sitting by the radio with mother and
Uncle Frank…their voices were low and serious
and their talk was of planes and German bombs.
Uncle Frank said something about Germans in
America being put in prison for the duration and
Mother kept saying over and over, ‘I’m only glad
Otto didn’t live to see it come to this.”
“Ghastly Statue with one
grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal”
• The Colossus of Rhodes
was a 30 m high statue
of a Greek god Helios.
• In 1960 Plath published
the poem ‘The Colossus’
which imagines her
father’s dead body is the
pieces of the Colossus
lying on the hill side; his
power over her broken.
“A head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset”
• Nauset is the coast in
Massachusetts where
Plath grew up
• Its sea is the Atlantic
ocean
“One grey toe
Big as a Frisco Seal”
A San Francisco Seal
“In the German tongue,
in the Polish town
scraped flat by the rollers
of wars, wars, wars.”
• Her father Otto Plath
emigrated to USA from
Grabow, Germany
• He spoke & taught German
• Grabow was in the Polish
Corridor
Photos: Grabow today; American soldiers in Grabow in
1945 after war’s end
“Chuffing me off like a Jew
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen”
• Trains taking Jews from Warsaw
to the camps
• The gates of Auschwitz
concentration camp in
Poland.
Concentration camps: Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen
“You stand at the
black board Daddy
In the picture I have of you”
This photo comes from Sylvia Plath’s
mother Aurelia. She said of her
husband in her book Letters
Home:
• “Otto’s superior education…our
former teacher student
relationship…led to an attitude of
“rightful” dominance on his
part…I realised that if I wanted a
peaceful home, I would simply
have to become more
submissive”
• “Otto did not take an active role
in tending to or playing with the
children, he loved them dearly
and took great pride in their
attractiveness and progress”
“The snows of the Tyrol
The clear beer of Vienna
are not very pure or
true”
• The Tirol is an alpine
mountain area in Austria
• Plath’s mother was of
Austrian descent and had
grown up speaking German
“my gypsy
ancestress…
and my Taroc
pack”
• Plath and Hughes were fascinated by
the occult
• In the evenings they would often play
with a a Ouja board and Tarot cards
Tarot card reading has
been popular in Europe
since 1500, including
Romania
In WWII Gypsies
(Roma people) were
also persecuted by the
Nazis and sent to
camps
“I have always been scared of you
With your Luftwaffe…”
• The Luftwaffe is the German Air
Force, which was the most
powerful in Europe in WWII
“And your neat moustache, • A Panzer was an
armoured tank
your Aryan eye bright blue.
• The Panzer divisions
Panzer man, Panzer man, O You’ were crucial in helping
Germany successfully
invade other countries
in WWII
“I made a model of you…”
Plath said about this poem…
'The poem is spoken by a
girl with an Electra
complex. Her father died
while she thought he was
God. Her case is complicated by the
fact that her father was also a Nazi
and her mother very possibly partJewish. In the daughter the two
strains marry and paralyse each
other--she has to act out the awful
little allegory before she is free of it.'
• The Electra complex ( theory from Freudian
psychology) that said women seek men who
are like their fathers and resent their mothers.
“The black telephone’s off at the root”
• Plath pulled the phone
cord out of the wall
when she intercepted
a call from Assia
Wevill to Ted Hughes
• This incident is also
mentioned in such
poems as Plath’s
‘Words heard, by
accident, over the
phone’ , ‘The Fearful’
and Hughes's ‘Do Not
Pick Up the
Telephone.’
As well as alluding to this
incident, what else does this
metaphor convey?
An interesting Plath-like image…
The Epiphany
So – what do you think?
What is ‘Daddy’ about?
Which of these statements would you agree with? Give reasons.
Or – write your own!
1. ‘Daddy’ is about how her father was as evil as Hitler.
2. ‘Daddy’ is about Plath’s hatred of her husband Ted Hughes.
3. The poem is saying that Sylvia Plath’s suffering at the hands of
men is as bad as the Jews’ suffering during the Holocaust.
4. The poem is about the suffering all women experience at the
hands of men.
5. The poem is about a daughter who both loves and hates her
father.
6. The poem is about a woman who suffered for her love of a
dominant father and husband and is trying to break free.
Is Daddy a good poem?
• IF YES … what makes it good?
• IF NO… what’s wrong with it?
Critics said…
• “Daddy is the ‘Guernica’ of Modern poetry”
• - George Steiner, critic
• “Despite everything, Daddy is a love poem” - A. Alvarez