Analysis of Daddy
Sylvia Plath 1932 (Boston) – 1963 (London)
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 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 gipsy 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 scared 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
Scheme | AABCDAEFGHIAAAAJKLMNAAOAPQDRASMAJAATAUVAAIDAATAWOAXABYAAAZAAVAAA1 AAAOAAA2 G3 4 AAAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (24%) Tetractys (21%) |
Metre | 11111111 10111 01111101 1101101 10101111 10111111 1101111 101001111 1011111 110101 001001010 11111101 001011001 111110101 11 0010100101 111010 1111 101101110 1101 11101011 11101111 11111 1101111 011011 11001101 1111 11101 111001011 001001 110110 111101 01110101 10111101 11111101 011010111010 1110111 11110111 01110111 11101101 1111111 11111 0111 01100111 10110111 1110100 1111111 1001001010 0100101 1110111 1110110 00101111 0101101111 1110101111 1010111 11101101 11111101 1101111 0111111 11100111 11111101 011101011 0111111 1101011 01011011 001101001 0111111 11011001 01101101 0101111 11111111 01011111 0111101 10111111 1011111 10101111 001001011 111001011 111111 101011011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,610 |
Words | 588 |
Sentences | 39 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 80 |
Lines Amount | 80 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,898 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 512 |
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Written on October 12, 1962
Submitted by danishrana3030 on December 25, 2021
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 2:56 min read
- 245 Views
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"Daddy" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/116513/daddy>.
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