The Theme Of Imagery In Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy'

In the year 1962, American author Sylvia Plath wrote the poem “Daddy,” this work of poetry had much influence from and on her life. There is more to this poem than meets the eye, in it there is a sense that Plath incorporated an unconscious view of her psychological state of when she was writing it. There is, in addition, a sense of her understanding of Nazism, because she lived through the World War II era and had a German immigrant father. Another view in the poem is also a direct result of her living through the World War II era, and that is the immense amount of imagery of the Holocaust. Finally there are so very many signs of the influence her father had on her. Many researchers have also discovered this and wrote up their reports …show more content…
Throughout the research of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” there has been one universal connection to every piece of imagery, and that is the fear she holds in her heart for her father. Plath incites the fear she holds for her “panzer-man” father, with his “neat mustache” and “bright blue” “Aryan eyes” throughout her poem (Plath, 41-45). In her poem “Daddy,” Plath gives readers a glimpse into her inner hatred of her father when she refers to him as a “vampire,” and continues on to annihilate him by driving a “stake” through his “fat, black heart” (Plath, 72-76). In his article “The German Plath,” Jeffrey Meyers shows that “she connects her father, who like a vampire bit her pretty red heart in two with her suicidal attempts to return to him and dig him up” (Meyers, 77-80). Also in her article “The Source of the Vampire and Frisco Seal in Plath’s ‘Daddy,’” Sherry Lutz Zively dictates that Plath’s image of a vampire is suggestive of her father’s research into parasites when she say that the “blood-sucking image of the vampire was probably suggested to Plath by her father’s study of parasites” (Zively, 194). This thesis can be further proved when in “Daddy” Plath also refers to her father as being a teacher when she states “you stand at the blackboard, daddy,” a blackboard being the chalk board that her father would stand in front of when he gave his lectures as a teacher at Boston University (Plath, 52; Zively, 194). Jeffery Meyers even furthers that Plath held fear and respect for her father even long after his death (Meyers, 77-80). In Meyers’ article, he also says that “he never portrays her father as an American, but always as a German or even a Nazi” (Meyers, 77-80). Plath portrays