Death And Redemption: An Analysis Of Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”

7 Pages 1779 Words

�� Holocaust metaphors and a repetitive, nursery rhyme style. The underlying current of rage and oppression gives the reader a sense of instability in the speaker’s tone and is emphasized in the many symbols she uses to describe her state of mind regarding her father’s death and her subsequent feelings of loss and aggression.

One set of symbols used by Plath to set the tone for the poem is found in recurring references to the “foot” and “boot” as well as other images relating to the foot, such as “shoe”, “toe” and “root”. It is with this image of the foot that Plath gives the reader an image of it as an overpowering force, indicating the significance that this event has played in her life. In the first stanza’s line, “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,” she is letting her feelings of sublimation be known to the reader immediately. Plath goes on to give her reasons for these feelings in the next stanza, which brings up her father’s death. Again...