Sylvia Plath: Her Release

11 Pages 2803 Words

and a “vampire.” “The speaker [Plath] here can categorize and manipulate her feelings in name calling,” (Leondopoulos 902). She uses the name-calling to mask her pain caused by the betrayal of her father.
In her poem, “Daddy”, written in 1962, Sylvia Plath uses her confessional style of poetry to work through one of the most influential traumas of her life—the death of her father, Otto Plath. A German immigrant, Otto Plath married Aurelia Schober in 1932, after settling in Massachusetts as a professor at Boston University. “Later that year, in October, the couple welcomed a daughter they called Sylvia. It has been documented that Otto wanted a boy and two years later, his son Warren was born. This left Sylvia pining for her father’s attention, doing anything she could do to win his love” (Butscher 8-9). Then, in 1940, Otto died after a neglected sore on his toe led to a gangrene infection that cost him his life.
To get away from the pain and suffering, all of her family moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts. In 1942, while attending public school in Wellesley, she wrote her first poem. Because Sylvia was so smart, she was placed two years above her grade level in sixth grade, but her mother moved her back to fifth grade. Sylvia soon turned to poetry as a means of dealing with the emotional void left by her father’s death. She continued, though, to excel in school and was awarded a scholarship to study at Smith College in 1950. While attending, she published her first work in Seventeen Magazine in 1950. Her story was called “And Summer Will Not Come Again.” She also worked for Mademoiselle Magazine and published “Ode on a Bitter Plum” (Holbrook).
Sylvia was a manic-depressive person. Despite her success, anxiety and depression still followed her and she was consequently treated with shock therapy as a last resort. The treatment was not successful and in 1953, she tried to take her own life and was eventua...