Daddy
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 the 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 gypsy 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 sacred 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.
(1962)
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
Sylvia Plath's poem presents a fierce attempt to break free from an overpowering father figure whose memory has dominated the poet's emotional life. The voice moves from childlike dependence to open rejection, turning the father into a force associated with imprisonment, silence, war, and cruelty. What begins as a personal address quickly expands into a larger nightmare world in which family trauma, national violence, and oppressive power seem fused together.
The poem's progress is dramatic and unstable: it opens with the image of being trapped, builds through bitter recollection and shocking comparisons, and then ends in an act of symbolic severance. The father is made into a tyrant, a dead idol, a fascistic presence, and even a vampire-like parasite. At the same time, the poem complicates its own aggression by showing how deeply the speaker has identified with the very figure she hates. The final declaration of release feels both triumphant and wounded, as if escape can only be achieved through a violent imaginative ritual rather than a clean emotional resolution.
Form Breakdown
Theme
- Parental domination - The father figure represents overwhelming authority, and the poem traces the lasting psychological damage caused by living under that force.
- Rebellion and release - The poem turns into an act of defiance, with the repeated address building toward a symbolic refusal to remain under the father's power.
- Trauma and memory - The speaker's memories are fragmented and charged with pain, showing how past injuries continue to shape the present.
- Identity through conflict - The speaker defines herself by both resisting and mirroring the father, suggesting that identity forms in struggle as much as in separation.
- Violence and historical terror - Images of war, fascism, and persecution widen the poem's emotional reach, linking private suffering to collective catastrophe.
- Silence and speech - The poem repeatedly returns to blocked language, as the speaker fights to speak after years of fear and suppression.
Literary Devices
- Extended metaphor - The father is compared to a black shoe, a tyrant, a Nazi, and a vampire, creating a chain of images that intensify his oppressive presence.
- Allusion - References to Germany, the Holocaust, and fascism connect the personal drama to twentieth-century history and mass violence.
- Repetition - Phrases such as the title word, the doubled declarations, and repeated sounds create obsession, pressure, and emotional insistence.
- Enjambment - The lines often run forward without pause, mirroring the speaker's rush of thought and emotional urgency.
- Symbolism - The black shoe, telephone, stake, and other objects stand for confinement, communication, and the struggle to cut ties.
- Colloquial diction - The poem blends blunt everyday speech with shocking imagery, making the emotional outburst feel immediate and raw.
- Incantatory rhythm - The chant-like movement of the poem gives it the force of a curse, confession, and exorcism at once.
Symbolism
- Black shoe - A symbol of confinement and suffocation, suggesting a life spent trapped inside the father's presence.
- Telephone - The broken phone line suggests severed communication and the end of the father's reach.
- Swastika - A symbol of fascist power and moral corruption, used to cast the father as an absolute oppressor.
- Vampire - The blood-drinking figure suggests emotional parasitism and the draining effects of a destructive relationship.
- Stake - A symbol of final defeat and ritual destruction, marking the speaker's attempt to stop the father's power permanently.
- Villagers - They suggest communal judgment or long-delayed recognition, reinforcing the sense of public verdict against the father figure.
Tone
Plath's tone is furious, mocking, and finally exultant, but it is never simple anger alone. The voice swings between bitterness, terror, irony, and grim celebration, so the reader experiences a mood that is claustrophobic, shocking, and emotionally volatile. Even the moments of apparent victory carry a harsh edge, as if freedom has been won only through psychic combat.
Historical Context
The poem belongs to the confessional tradition of modern poetry, in which personal experience is treated with unusual directness and emotional intensity. It also reflects the postwar atmosphere of the mid-twentieth century, when images of fascism, genocide, and authoritarian power had an especially disturbing force in literature and culture. Those historical references deepen the poem's private anguish by linking family trauma with the broader language of political terror.
Plath's work is often read alongside other writers who transformed intimate suffering into highly charged symbolic language. The poem's mixture of autobiography, mythic pattern, and historical allusion is characteristic of late modern poetry, where the boundaries between personal memory and collective history often blur.
Similar Poems
- "Medusa" - Sylvia Plath
- "Lady Lazarus" - Sylvia Plath
- "My Last Duchess" - Robert Browning
- "A Supermarket in California" - Allen Ginsberg
- "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" - Ezra Pound