Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" is a highly controversial and widely anthologized modern poem, published posthumously in 1965 in the collection named Ariel. Plath is considered one of the prominent figures of the confessional school of poetry and “Daddy” is a prominent specimen of that poetic genre. Here Plath directly unmasks very personal life details. Confessional poetry is “highly emotional in tone, autobiographical in content, and narrative in structure.” Usually presented in the first person narrative, there is hardly any distance between the speaker and the poet. The confessional mode “allowed poets to articulate feelings, thoughts, and emotions that challenged the decorum of an era marked by its containment of psychic needs and desires.”

Since “Daddy” includes a lot of autobiographical details, some relevant information about Plath’s life before and during the time of the composition of the poem may help to come in terms with the poem’s context.  Plath uses controversial metaphors of the holocaust to convey her complex relationship with her father, Otto Plath, who died shortly after her eighth birthday as a result of complications following the amputation of a foot. (“I was ten when they buried you”). He had been ill previously before his death for around four years before finally dying from untreated diabetes mellitus. “The father’s tragic death haunted her throughout her life. Undeniably, losing the paternal figure at an early age made a seemingly irreplaceable void in her life. Her dad left her at a very sensitive age; an age that requires forming a strong, close emotional bond between the child and the father.” “Daddy” incarnate the presence of her dead father.

“Daddy” was originally written in October 1962, a month after Plath's separation from her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, and four months before her death by suicide. Their marriage was cut short because of Hughes’ affair with a friend of Plath, which caused Plath and Hughes to separate. After her separation from Hughes, Plath moved with her two children into a flat in London during December 1962 and where "Daddy" was written. Shortly after, Plath committed suicide on February 11, 1963.(to be continued...)