Critically analyzing the poem ‘‘Daddy’’ by Sylvia Path Mary Lynn Broe argues that the poem is about reserved domestic issues that relate to significant historical tussles, public establishments and dialectal arrangements. There is Mary Lynn goes ahead to suggest that transitioning from the domestic issues world to the more or less oppressive partisan world. Perception can get hold of the device that creates and dominates it creating the illusion that there may not be the right setting with the generation of the domestic chaos (Sylvia,1992). Mary argues that the German language was used as a suppressive political tool towards the society. The means of communication indicated that the language applied reflected the social and political condition of the region.
Mary Lynn observes that language was used to oppress the society. Lynn analyzes that through language Plath finds human relationships to be vehement and outrageous leaving discrete and reserved relationships to the public arena. By having to put the domestic issues in to the public eye, Plath posits that these relationships remain divided and drawn away from communal life (Martin, 1987). This develops the witnessed tension within the writing to explain the significance of domestic relationships within the community. Mary Lynn finds out that in the midst of conflict, Plath figures out other ways that can be employed to unite families she remains silent, but struggles to respond.
Although she hesitates in her shameful weakness, the persona in the poem brings out her paucity and gives voice to her fear and anger (Broe, 1980). The repetition of the word Ich was used to show the oppressors language, the word; an engine also used repeatedly enlightening itself as a standardizing, mechanical force. These combine to accord the definition that highlights the tension and plot flowing within the lines in the poem.
Another critique Pamela J. Annas observes that the poem ‘‘Daddy’’ depicts both language and identity conflict. The center of conflict revolves around the tone applied within the lines and the contribution of grammatical style. The possessive pronoun ‘‘I ‘in the poem was presented as uncertain. This positions the reader of the poem as part of the poem. Pamela suggests that the subject’s responsiveness of a defined relation to the object may be understood as a written or graphical signifier ‘‘I’’ bringing out crisis in terms of both language and identity.
Pamela learns that in the poem the repeated alternations between ‘I’ and ‘you’ used by Plath, mark the division of subject-object relation (Kroll, 2007). However, by trying to join the father in death, the narrator in the poem also disconcerts the unity in her subjectivity, and introduces conflict into the poem, an idea that was endorsed in the way the poem was written.
Steven Gould Axelrod deduces “Daddy,” a famous Ariel poem by Plath as one in which the poet fight back the weight of a male-dominated scholarly custom. Axelrod posits that the poem stirs up an inner fretfulness about the literacy world of her time and a desire to free her from its male dominance (Axelrod, 1990). He notes that, the poem is written at a time when the poet was going through a domestic turmoil where her husband who was a writer had filed for a divorce. The tension had been developed within the minor family level. Her father who was a writer had also just died. She further states that the domestic disorder acted as reagent to the poet to write the poem. According to his interpretation, the poet’s anger against her husband Hughes and her father was a reaction against fatherly authority that she hated. By crying out away with daddy, the poet frees herself from the two men she hated in her life. To the poet, her father and husband are demons that have to be exorcizing out of her mind (Sandra & Gubar, 1994). The relationship is not beneficial and develops increasing constraints than benefit realized.
After the exorcisms, the poet felt an inner emptiness in a way that Axelrod suggests that, she wrote herself to a suicidal mindset. This analysis of “Daddy, “by Axelrod though, convincing and revealing, confine the poem’s scope to Plath’s individual awareness of being an author, daughter, and spouse. He gives a wider elucidation, though, suggests that the Daddy in the poem refers to the fathers of Law, the fortitude of male dominated government. This may refer to the World War II that proved that absolute patriarchy rule permitted totalitarianism and absolutism. This analysis shows that the poem is a study of the cruelty against women, religion, and racism “Daddy” fixes by waging “wars. Plath explains the subjugation of the regime then. She points to the obsession and the incapability of the oppressed; Jews, women, blacks to access the language of the oppressor; the Germany youth. This leads to ultimate acknowledgment of an inevitable economic situation. It is obvious that the two analysts of the poem, Mary Lynn and Steven Goud have given the clearest interpretations of the poem.
References
Broe, M. L. (1980), The Colossus: ‘In Sign Language of a Lost Other World. In Protean Poetic:
The Poetry of Sylvia Plath, 43-79. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
Gould.A.S & Sylvia. P,(1990), the Wound and the Curl of Words. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins UP.
Kroll. J, (1976)Chapters in A Mythology: The Poetry Of Sylvia Plath. New York: Harper & Row
HC.
Martin, W L, (1987), Sylvia Plath: A Biography. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Sylvia. P, (1992), the Collected Poems, New York: Harper
Perennial.
Sandra. G. M. & Gubar. S, (1994) No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the
Twentieth Century, Volume Three, Letters from the Front. New Haven: Yale UP.
