A Critical Analysis of \"Daddy\" by Sylvia Plath

Andrea Martínez Celis Universidad Complutense de Madrid Crítica Literaria e Investigación Contemporánea en Lengua Inglesa Dr. María Goicoechea de Jorge 3º Grado en Estudios Ingleses Facultad de Filología 09/04/2015

A Critical Analysis of Daddy by Sylvia Plath

Daddy Sylvia Plath 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, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time– Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You– Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot

But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through. The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two– The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through

Daddy Sylvia Plath General Analysis Sylvia Plath was an American writer, she wrote poetry, novels, and short stories. She was born in Boston 1932 and she committed suicide in London in 1963. ‘Daddy’ was written in 1962, around four months before her death, but it was published posthumously. Her entire life was a controversy since she suffered several depressions during most of her adulthood, taking the fatal decision of ending her own life when she was just thirty years old. She was considered a feminist by some people and exactly the opposite by others. One of her first goals in life was to be a good wife and a good mother, but at the same time she got to be a famous writer and to place herself in the world of literature among several male names in which women had not been accepted until then. Could a woman be a perfect wife and a feminist at the same time? She could not answer this question since she died very young. Her poetry was famous for being especially honest, for describing exactly what she felt without caring about what people could think, and this was a difficult task for a woman in the society of the Fifties. She wrote about very different themes during her life; nature, love, vengeance, rage etc. However, her favourite theme was death, it seemed from the very beginning of her career that she was obsessed with death. In most of her works, whatever the subject, the darkness of death remains between the lines. She wrote confessional poetry; it means personal poetry, the poetry of the ‘’I’’ in which the author uses literature to confess personal experiences, private feelings, traumas, depressions or difficult relationships. ‘Daddy’ is one of her most famous poems because of very the hard metaphor she does about the Holocaust. She ‘‘lived’’ The Second World War as a child despite she could live a normal life far from the war, her father 1

was a German American author, Otto Plath, he is more likely protagonist of this poem. He and his daughter could have a difficult relationship, although he died when she was only eight years old. She compared the Holocaust with the patriarchal society in which she lived; the father’s image as a God is similar to the image of Hitler in Germany. Sylvia Plath could be considered within the literary canon inasmuch as she won several major awards in literature, notably the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for 'The Collected Poems' in 1982. 'Daddy' was not in this book and it was maybe because of the controversial issue that she wrote about. Perhaps this poem is not considered within the canon because, as many authors claim, the canon is not just about literary quality but ideology and politics. Therefore, a woman writing about the Holocaust as a metaphor of her father does not exactly match the perfect idea of the Western Canon. This essay will analyse and criticize a polemic poem written by a controversial author from some varied critical movements.

New Criticism New Criticism is a movement very focused on the ‘’close reading’’ of the piece itself, forgetting historical context, the biography of the author or other external factors that can modify the way in which people read literature. New Critics defend that this kind of reading is completely objective, because they try to isolate literalness. This theory attempts to create a science of literature, meaning that literature needs a technique to be literature. As New Critics it is necessary to know the ‘false fallacies’: -Intentional fallacy: The author does not write what he or she intends to do, it means that readers cannot assume and judge the intentions of the author. -Affective fallacy: Separating the poem from its own effect. This is that the reader has to differentiate what the poem is and what the poem does. 2

-Biographical Fallacy: Assuming that literature must be an actual reflection of the author’s life and experience. -Communication fallacy: Literature is not a way to indoctrinate people. Literature does not have anything to do with politics or ideologies. Literature should not interfere with society. Taking this information into account, the first step to interpret this poem as New Critic is to analyse form and meter. This includes rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric. New Criticism tries to find a pattern. On the one hand ‘Daddy’ has free verse which means that there is no an established pattern of rhythm or rhyme. On the other hand, ‘Daddy’ is composed of sixteen quintains, ie sixteen five-line stanzas. The poem must have a unified meaning. The main problem with this analysis is that as New Critics do not take into account the context, there are just abstract content in this poem. The free verse and the complex meaning of its lines could be because it is just a metaphor of Anarchy in literature. However, the title of the poem clearly reveals that the poem talks about her father, which means that the author is reflecting her life.

Russian Formalism Russian Formalism stresses the importance of poetic language in the literature studies. Russian Formalists try to create a ‘scientific method‘ to differentiate between literature and ‘no-literature’. The main difference with New Criticism is that Formalists believe that human ‘content’ gives the context for the functioning of literary ‘devices’ while New Critics were very humanistic. The tool to recognize literature quality is the use of poetic language, this language has some properties that the reader can analyse. Poetry is the result of an excellent use of language whose main characteristic is the rhythm. As literature is compound of language, linguistics, as the science of language, is fundamental for the Formalists. Literature is autonomous, which means that it is different from the quotidian and practical use of language. Form and content 3

are absolutely connected, since Formalists defend the idea that the history of literature is the innovation in formal structures. ‘Defamiliarization’ is one of the main concepts; it is the ability to use language in a different way from the ordinary language to cause distinctive effects on the readers. Formalists also distinguish between ‘plot’ and ‘story’; while ‘plot’ is the literary part, ‘story’ is just raw material that must be organized by the author. Firstly, the author uses in ‘Daddy’ a lot of ordinary language, but in a different way through literary devices, this could be seen as defamiliarization of language. For example the use of

‘shoe’, ‘tongue’, ‘town’, ‘engine’,

‘blackboard’, ‘brute’, ‘glue’, ‘telephone’ etc. They are very used in the quotidian life however in this poem they are conveying very different feelings from the daily life. It is also notable the several references to some countries and religions, and the use of the word ‘Fascist’ in the literary context, in a poetic manner. The plot of the poem is the relationship between the ‘Daddy’ and his daughter. The story might be the facts of the Second World War with which the author works. The motif of this poem is the father, while the motivation is that the father existed so, the reference to reality is clear along the whole text. The main literary device that Sylvia Plath used is metaphor; the entire poem is a metaphor, therefore it could be called allegory. As it was said before, she compares her family life with a Fascist life. The concept of ‘foreground’ to refer to ‘the aesthetically intentional distortion of linguistics components’ is clear in this poem. She uses words with different functions. For example, when she mentions several Nazi extermination camps: ‘‘Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen’’, she is looking for the aesthetic side of these horrible places that make the readers think of very sad images. The same when she says ‘‘Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute, Brute heart of a brute like you.’’, she gets the aesthetic vision, even the erotic side of this of a violent scene.

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Structuralism This critical theory defends that literary texts must have a universal narrative structure; it means that they must follow a kind of rules, a predetermined system, to be considered literature. This is the reason because literature is divided into genres. For Structuralists, literature is easier to understand by experienced readers than by the rest of people. Literature and its rules must be taught in educational institutions. When talking about Structuralism, Binary Opposition theory must be mentioned. This means that we as human beings associate automatically certain opposites, such as men as opposed to women, ie, who is not a man, is a woman, and several examples like this. The main problem with this critical theory is that nothing would be new at all, because all literature pieces would follow the same structure, taking the greatest of literature as examples. Is Sylvia Plath just following these rules? She respects a structure; sixteen five-line stanzas, and this is the reason because it is considered a poem. Furthermore, she is labeled in the genre of confessional poetry, despite she wrote other genres as well. However, critics strike again with the theme of the poem, the newest and most relevant aspect of this poem. On the one hand, it cannot be said that this is absolutely new, but Sylvia Plath is not trying to follow rules or copy other great poets. She is trying to create her own style to convey her own feelings without thinking about the literary system. On the other hand, the reader can feel the deep part of the poem, she is not inventing a stage, she is actually talking about historical facts, a hard reality. Therefore, she could be trying to convey these elements to create what is called by Structuralists as 'true literature'.

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Poststructuralism and Deconstruction This theory was born as opposed to Structuralism and it is based on the idea of the complexity of human being. Since literature is created by humans, literature is too complex to be classified under structures and systems. Some modern philosophers such as Freud found out that there are parts of the human condition that we cannot control. Therefore, this theory is closely related to phallogocentrism. Jacques Derrida explained it as a mixture of phallocentrism; that is the supremacy of the male, and logocentrism; which gives more importance to language, both of them relative to the meaning. As when talking about Structuralism it must be mentioned the Binary Opposition

theory,

Poststructuralism

defends

the

opposite

theory;

Deconstruction. This theory rejects opposites and hierarchies, it goes against the universal relations previously established. The only possible way to understand the world is deconstructing it, ie; forgetting our preconceptions and our knowledge previously learned.

Nothing is true. The human being knows

nothing about the world or about the human beings themselves. Therefore, we cannot create rules or systems, because nothing is clear. One thing may mean several things at the same time or nothing. A sign does not have to mean a signifier and a signified, because there is no truth. There is a trial of signifiers; this means that a sign is a sign of a sign of a sign etc. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this movement of literary criticism was born in the same era in which Sylvia Plath wrote this poem; in the Sixties. The reader can identify this lack of meaning of life in this poem and the rest of her literary work. Actually, this poem is so important because of the absence of a clear meaning or an explanation; all we have are just assumptions. This problem is found with all authors whose writings were published after their deaths, because anybody can give a clear answer for them. The general assumption is that this poem is about her father. However, her father died when she was eight, so maybe, as some people believe, it is about her husband, or somebody else. The western ideology tends to relate the figure of authority to the father or 6

the husband, always with the man. But, as it was said before, if we ‘deconstruct’ reality the reader could understand better the poem. Labeling this poem under an ideology, it is not clear if it is feminist or misogynist, if it is racist or antiracist etc. This is because nothing is absolutely true. The reader cannot understand Sylvia Plath’s mind or intention, because there are parts of our brain that we ourselves cannot control. Sometimes even the author is not aware of what she or he is writing, because subconscious may be who is talking.

Conclusion After studying ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath from different critical theories, the reader cannot extract a clear conclusion. The Western Cannon’s theory would say that this is not literature because of the topic that she is talking about; the Holocaust, nobody can create literature of such a horrible historical event. New Critics would say that this is not literature because the reader cannot understand any word without the context and she does not follow a clear pattern, therefore it would not make any sense. Formalist would criticize its ‘ordinary’ language, but they would praise the way she manages to create literature from that lot of common words. Structuralists would agree with the structure of ordered stanzas, but they would not agree with the intertextuality of the text and the lack of a marked rhythm. Poststructuralism would be the most suitable critical theory for this poem because of the lack of a clear meaning and the ‘deconstruction’ of the words that Sylvia Plath gets to create.

Personal Opinion From my point of view, Sylvia Plath is a great author and this poem is probably the best one. Despite that she uses free verse, the poem has much musicality due to rhyme. She has the power to create a beautiful piece of literature referring to the most heinous crime against humanity, and that is 7

great. However, I am not able to analyse this poem without thinking that it was written a short time before she committed suicide. Therefore, I, as a reader, can feel anxiety because of the lack of life’s meaning that she conveys through these lines. She had tried to end her life several times before, but when she was writing this poem she wanted to write something about her father, but it was not just about her father. I think that her subconscious wrote a poem about her entire life. Firstly, her father, then her husband and, at the end of her life, even her own children could be the hidden subject of this poem. She was always under the pressure of being a woman of the middle class because of different factors. Going to university, getting married and having children were supposedly her dreams, the goals of her life, as they were for most of women at that time. Nevertheless, when she achieved all the things she wished, she ignited the gas, and she ended her own life forever. Perhaps she realized that happiness was not in the goals, it was in the way to get her goals, and she did not enjoy her life at all. Answering the question I asked at the beginning, I strongly believe that a woman can be a perfect wife, a perfect mother, and a feminist at the same time. Although, I think this poem is not just a claim about the patriarchal society; it is a summary of her life, a way to ask for help or just saying goodbye. In my opinion, it is impossible to separate literature from its context, words cannot work on their own, they need a context to make sense. Literature is not a science. For me the most wonderful of literature is freedom, not to have the obligation of following rules or systems, feeling free to interpret it. L'art pour l'art , love to create something, in a selfless way, and without labels.

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Bibliography Academy of American Poets. ‘‘A Brief Guide to Confessional Poetry’’ Academy of American Poets. 2014. 2 Apr. 2015 Delahoyde, Michael. ‘‘New Criticism’’ Critical Theory. Introduction to Literature. 9 Feb. 2015. 2 Apr. 2015 Gallardo Paúls, Elena. ''Formalismo Norteamericano'' Sobre poética. Blog sobre Teoría de la Literatura. 24 Apr. 2010. 2 Apr. 2015 Poetry Foundation. ‘‘Sylvia Plath’’ Poems and Poets. 2015. 2 Apr. 2015 Sally. ‘‘Sylvia Plath: The Accidental Feminist’’ What did I see today? 26 May. 2003. 2 Apr. 2015 Selden, Raman, et al. A reader's guide to contemporary literary theory. England: Prentice Hall, 1997. . Selden, Raman et al. La teoría crítica contemporánea. Barcelona: Ariel, 2004. Sturrock, John, ed. Structuralism and Since. From Lévi-Strauss to Derrida. Oxford & New York : Oxford University Press, 1981. Swirski, Peter. ‘‘Popular and Highbrow Literature : A Comparative View’’Comparative Literature and Culture. 1 Apr. 1999. 2 Apr. 2015. Sylvia. Dir. Christine Jeffs. BBC Films & Capitol Films, 2003. Film.

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