Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton

Sylvia Plath uses her poem, Daddy, to express deep emotions toward her father’s 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 Plath’s 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 the poem “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath describes her true feelings about her deceased father. Throughout the dialogue, the reader can find many instances that illustrate a great feeling of hatred toward the author’s father. She begins by expressing her fears of her father and how he treated her. Subsequently she conveys her outlook on the wars being fought in Germany. She continues by explaining her life since her father and how it has related to him.

Plath’s “Daddy” is embodied with rich imagery, symbolism and metaphors which convey the speaker’s fascination with death, decay and gloominess. It is not clear the poem is an autobiography of Plath’s life but it is evident Plath had some difficulties growing up that seem to penetrate some aspects of this poem. The poem opens with and angry tone “You do not do, you do not do,” creating an emotionally charged atmosphere for the preceding lines. One of the powerful tools Plath uses to carry home her message is imagery “Black Shoe” for instance creates dark memories of her dad and the difficulties she endures. In a bitter mockery, Plath compares her Dad to God; because though dead, this powerful man finds a way to control her an indication that her father’s overbearing attitude still taunts her. The “black” color symbolizes fear, oppression and desolation that she experiences in life through her dad. The similes in the poem are

Introduction: Conflicting perspectives are different points of view expressed and influenced by ones context and values. “Birthday Letters” by Ted Hughes is an anthology of poems challenging the accusation that he was responsible for his wife, Sylvia Plath’s death. The three poems The Minotaur, Your Paris, and Red are an insight into Hughes justification of the death of Plath using a very subjective and emotive poetic form. The poems possess many deliberate techniques such as extended metaphors, connotations, diction and juxtaposition to encourage the audience to accept his argument that he was not the one to blame for this world renown tragedy. The poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath also displays conflicting perspectives of the

As is inherent within the tradition of confessional poetry, a subgenre of lyric poetry which was most prominent from the fifties to the seventies (Moore), Sylvia Plath uses the events of her own tragic life as the basis of creating a persona in order to examine unusual relationships. An excellent example of this technique is Plath’s poem “Daddy” from 1962, in which she skilfully manipulates both diction, trope and, of course, rhetoric to create a character which, although separate from Plath herself, draws on aspects of her life to illustrate and make points about destructive, interhuman relations. Firstly that of a father and daughter, but later also that of a wife and her unfaithful husband.

Sylvia Plath and Gwen Harwood tell two very different stories of parental relationships, Mother Who Gave Me Life praising Harwood’s mother and speaking with love and affection, whereas Plath’s Daddy is full of hate for her father. These reflections on the poet’s parental relationships are made using imagery, symbolism and tone.

How Sylvia Plath's Life is Reflected in the Poems Daddy, Morning Song, and Lady Lazarus

With using these mythological gods as metaphors for the father’s we can take a step back and see how damaged these women were from their relationships. Olds’ had to deal with an alcoholic father, something that I know is not easy and what’s worse than alcoholism is what Plath had to go through, being completely ignored and neglected from your father and that wound will take longer to heal. Both poems come from terrible relationships from young women with their fathers. And again, this can go to show that no matter how absent a father may be from your life and how he might treat you, when you are part of a father dominating family structure, you cannot escape his influence on your life and these emotional damages will follow you forever.

Sylvia Plath is known as a profound writer, depicted by her lasting works of literature and her suicide which put her poems and novel of debilitating depression into a new perspective. In her poem “Lady Lazarus,” written in 1962, her mental illness is portrayed in a means to convey to her readers the everyday struggle of depression, and how it affects her view of her world, herself, and even those who attempt to tackle her battle with her. This poem, among other poetry pieces and her novel The Bell Jar, identify her multiple suicide attempts, and how the art of dying is something she has become a master of. Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” about her trap of depression and suicide attempts, is effective and thought provoking because of her allusions to WWII Nazi Germany and the feelings of oppression and Nazism that the recurring images evoke.

Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy,” is about a girl who has lost her father at a young age, and since his death, she cannot stop thinking about him. The speaker appears to be Plath consumed in metaphors that resemble the way she feels about her father and former husband. Plath’s father passed away when she was only eight in the poem she states, “I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I

Anne Sexton’s poetry was stark, unrestrained and personal, compared to the traditional. It captivated her readers with its real, unique sense of style. The poems spoke of intimate, deep experiences. Anne Sexton’s poetry delves into mental illness and death by using imagery, diction and free verse to convey isolation, depression and the search for identity.

Sylvia Plath’s poetry is well known for its deeply personal and emotional subject matter. Much of Plath’s poetry is confessional and divulges the most intimate parts of her psyche whether through metaphor or openly, without creating a persona through which to project her feelings, and through the use of intense imagery. Plath’s attempt to purge herself of the oppressive male figures in her life is one such deeply personal and fundamental theme in her poetry. In her poem, “Daddy”, which declares her hatred for her father and husband, this attempt is expressed through language, structure, and tone. (Perkins, 591)

The two poems, “And One for My Dame” by Anne Sexton and “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, both explore similar themes through the use of literary elements such as structure, tone and symbolism. Structures in each poem are alike with length but differ with the actual form. The tone Plath conveys is negative one while Sexton’s is more neutral. The symbolism in “Daddy” was also negative with symbols of the devil but Sexton used a nursery rhyme as a symbol. The connotations of these elements reflect the image the daughters had of their fathers but also the relationships. These poems also both deal with the theme of

Although everyone has a father, the relationship that each person has with his or her father is different. Some are close to their fathers, while some are distant; some children adore their fathers, while other children despise them. For example, in Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” Hayden writes about his regret that he did not show his love for his hardworking father sooner. In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” she writes about her hatred for her brute father. Despite both authors writing on the same topic, the two pieces are remarkably different. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” have different themes that are assembled when the authors put their different uses of imagery, tone, and characterization together.

Sylvia Plath?s poem "Daddy" describes her feelings of oppression from her childhood and conjures the struggle many women face in a male-dominated society. The conflict of this poem is male authority versus the right of a female to control her own life and be free of male domination. Plath?s conflicts begin with her father and continue into the relationship between her and her husband. This conflict is examined in lines 71-80 of "Daddy" in which Plath compares the damage her father caused to that of her husband.