Sylvia Plath uses her poem, Daddy, to express deep emotions toward her fathers life and death. With passionate articulation, she verbally turns over her feelings of rage, abandonment, confusion and grief. Though this work is fraught with ambiguity, a reader can infer Plaths basic story. Her father was apparently a Nazi soldier killed in World War II while she was young. Her statements about not knowing even remotely where he was while he was in battle, the only photograph she has left of him and how she chose to marry a man that reminded her of him elude to her grief in losing her father and missing his presence. She also expresses a dark anger toward him for his political views and actions in such passages as: Not God but a swastika / so black no sky could squeak through and the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you. She goes on talk about how her poor or non-existent relationship with her father caused her to enter an unhealthy relationship. Finally, she conveys a mood of overcoming this mans dark hold on her. She is still filled with unhealthy rage toward him but in her repeating that she is through and discussing having killed someone she demonstrates her feelings of self-empowerment.As Plath is using this poem as her personal forum to release her emotions, she also provides her audience with a look of her artistic style. She creates a poem that will enthrall the reader using mediums like vague material such as stanza two (2):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 toeBig as a Frisco seal.She also uses quite a bit of repetition to emphasize her points. A repeated word tends to offer a high level of exaggeration. She does not use repeated sounds so much as words or phrases that allow the audience to almost picture a woman screaming angrily. She also presents a slight rhythm to the reading that allows for smooth reading. In keeping with her ...
