Sylvia Plath can very easily be considered one of the brightest minds in all of confessional poetry. She wrote hundreds of poems in her lifetime and three books: “The Colossus”, “Ariel”, and “The Bell Jar”. Despite all of her brilliance, she was plagued with a sea of mental illnesses. “The Bell Jar” was written to chronicle the events that occurred before and after her first suicide attempt. Her most famous poem, “Daddy”, mentions how she tried to join her father in death. There is even a psychological phenomenon named after her. Her life, though successful, was unhappy, as evidenced in The Bell Jar, Daddy, and the Sylvia Plath phenomenon.
“The Bell Jar” is thought to parallel Sylvia’s first attempt at suicide. It is an atypical coming of …show more content…
“Daddy” is a perfect example of her dive into confessional poetry. Sylvia writes the poem daddy after her and her husband separate. The poem vividly paints the reader a picture of what she thinks of her father: as both a devil and a Nazi, a black man and a vampire. The anger and sadness of her father’s death stayed with her well into her thirties which is how old she was when she began to write the poem. Those two emotions were so distressing to her that she constantly repeats through the poem that she’s scared and afraid of him. It’s possible that, while she might actually be afraid of her father, she is also afraid of the powerful and passionate emotions that he causes inside of her. She relates herself to a Jew and makes her father a Nazi, a controlling and frightening figure. It’s possible that she feels that her father, even after death, controls every aspect of her life. In fear of her powerful desire to be with him, she writes: “At twenty I tried to die/And get back, back, back to you./I thought even the bones would do./But they pulled be out of the sack,/And they stuck me together with glue.” She tried to kill herself just to be with him and, after she was saved, did not feel the same until she finally decided to do away with her father and her husband, which she says she modeled after
“The Bell Jar” is thought to parallel Sylvia’s first attempt at suicide. It is an atypical coming of …show more content…
“Daddy” is a perfect example of her dive into confessional poetry. Sylvia writes the poem daddy after her and her husband separate. The poem vividly paints the reader a picture of what she thinks of her father: as both a devil and a Nazi, a black man and a vampire. The anger and sadness of her father’s death stayed with her well into her thirties which is how old she was when she began to write the poem. Those two emotions were so distressing to her that she constantly repeats through the poem that she’s scared and afraid of him. It’s possible that, while she might actually be afraid of her father, she is also afraid of the powerful and passionate emotions that he causes inside of her. She relates herself to a Jew and makes her father a Nazi, a controlling and frightening figure. It’s possible that she feels that her father, even after death, controls every aspect of her life. In fear of her powerful desire to be with him, she writes: “At twenty I tried to die/And get back, back, back to you./I thought even the bones would do./But they pulled be out of the sack,/And they stuck me together with glue.” She tried to kill herself just to be with him and, after she was saved, did not feel the same until she finally decided to do away with her father and her husband, which she says she modeled after