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Jennifer Chesley
Trenton Judson
English 1010-062
8 July 2013
Rhetorical Analysis
Each night when I was growing up, at about nine oclock, I knew that I would soon be
seeing my dad peek into whatever room I was in to gather together my brothers, sisters, and I for
our nightly ritual of reading as a family. We would sit around the living room and take turns
reading from the chosen novel and would often want to keep reading even though it was time for
bed. June has become a month where I reflect on all the things that my dad has done for my
family and me since it is the month where we celebrate our dads on Father's day and then at the
end of the month is my dad's birthday. My dad is a quiet man who loves to read, listen to
classical music and be with his family and if I ever have a problem, I know that he will be there
to listen and give advice and comfort to me. It is difficult for me to relate to people who have not
been blessed with a great dad, but Sylvia Plath's poem Daddy helps me to see the other side.
Sylvia Plath is a poetess in the mid-twentieth century and she is known for advancing the style of
confessional poetry. The poem Daddy is about finding closure over her father's life and death.
Plath's father died when she was a child before she had a chance to really know him. At first she
idolizes him as a god, but comes to realized that he is more like the devil. She undertakes a task
to find out more about her fathers past, and as she is learning more, she realizes the influence,
mostly bad, that her father has had in her life. Sylvia Plath conveys the feelings she had about her
father effectively by appealing to reader's emotions using comparisons, by using logic to show
cause and effect, and by using word choices that keep the reader's attention.

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Plath effectively appeals to the readers emotions by comparing her father to well known
figures such as god, Hitler and the Nazis, the devil, and vampires. The poem begins in a slightly
sing-song rhyme that is reminiscent of childhood and Plath describes how the daughter felt about
her father when she was young by saying, Marble-heavy, a bag full of God / Ghastly statue
(Plath 8-9). The two images of the father being a statue and a God complement one another. The
statue can be seen as someone who is rigid and unmoving and a God is usually characterizes as
someone who is omnipotent, or all-powerful with unlimited authority and influence. The father is
idealized by the daughter in her youth as someone who cannot be touched or questioned, but
later in the poem she rejects this comparison to God, Not God but a swastika (Plath 46). The
use of a swastika, a symbol of Nazi Germany, and a comparison of her father to Hitler himself,
And your neat mustache / And your Aryan eye, bright blue finds us looking at the father with a
more evil intent (Plath 43-44). The daughter equates herself more with the Jewish people who,
during World War II, were brutally oppressed, imprisoned and murdered by the millions. Plath
emphasizes this point by also comparing the father to the devil. The daughter is looking at a
picture of her father where he is standing at a chalkboard and notices that, A cleft in your chin
instead of your foot / But no less a devil for that (Plath 53-54). Historically, the devil is
portrayed in art as having a cleft feet like a goat. The last comparison is to vampires as they have
been portrayed traditionally such as in Dracula, and not modernly like in the Twilight series.
These vampires feed off of mortal beings, sucking their blood, a persons life essence, from
them. The poems says, There's a stake in your fat black heart / And the villagers never like
you. / They are dancing and stamping on you (Plath 76-78). One of the most effective ways to
kill a vampires is to stab at wooden stake through its heart. The villagers, and likely the daughter,
were so happy that the vampire was gone that they held a celebration on top of his grave. Most

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people have strong feelings against the devil, Nazis, and vampires that convey the feelings of
cruelty and evil. By using the comparisons to these well-known figures, Plath creates a common
ground for the reader to be able to relate to the type of man that the father was.
Plath shows how her father has affected her life by seeing her father reflected in the
German people, by marrying a man like her dad, and by the suicide attempt to return to her
father. The daughter takes a trip to Germany in an effort to connect with her father by finding the
town in which he was from. She is unsuccessful because there are dozens of towns with the same
name in the region. The daughter says, I thought every German was you. / And the language
obscene (Plath 29-30). The German people reminded the daughter of her father so much that
she could see him in each person and the language was repulsive to her ears. There is nothing
inherently repulsive about the German people or its language, but the daughter was so skewed by
seeing her father in their faces, that they became revolting to her. Next, Plath shows that the
daughter was so influenced by her father that she wanted to find a man just like him to marry.
She says,
I made a model of you
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of rack and the screw
And I said I do, I do. (Plath 64-67)
The men in a young girls life, especially her father, can have a profound effect on the man that
the daughter will grow up to date and to marry. The man will often be a complete opposite from
the father, or just the same as the father. In this case, the husband closely resembles the father,
which was not a good and healthy relationship. Lastly, the daughter talks about the reasons for a
suicide attempt related to her father. I was ten when they buried you / At twenty I tried to die /

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And get back, back, back to you (Plath 57-59). The first ten years of her life, the daughter had
the father in her life to interact with before he died. The next ten years were spent wanting to
know him better, so that at age twenty, she tried to commit suicide so that they could be together
again. The father has such a profound influence on the daughter throughout her lifetime that
many of the choices that she made were prompted because he was not there.
Plath uses creative and powerful word choices to keep the reader's attention. The
daughter describes her father as, Ghastly statue with one grey toe / Big as a Frisco seal (Plath
9-10). In real life, Plaths father suffered from diabetes, and this could be a reference to what
happened when the disease went untreated and gangrene infected his toe. The imagery of
comparing the toe to a big grey blob gives the reader a powerful and gruesome picture. Next, a
section in the middle of the poem is framed by the same phrase. The end of the third stanza says
the German words, Ach, du and its English translation is at the end of stanza nine, O You
(Plath 15, 45). The section in between these two phrases discuss the father's ancestry and the
daughter's desire to know more about it. The repetition of the phrase in English signals a return
to the discussion comparing her father to a God that occurred at the beginning of the poem.
Another section with potent word choice is when the daughter says, no not / Any less then black
man who / Bit my pretty red heart in two (Plath 54-56). Plath could have just said that her heart
was broken, but by using the image of the father taking her heart and eating it, shows that the
heartbreak goes much deeper. The final line of the poem, Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I'm
through is the most powerful line in the poem (Plath 80). The previous stanza has just compared
the father to a vampire and how the villages put a stake through its heart. This concluding line
does just that to his memory. The selections of words and phrases that Plath used gives the reader
a deeper understanding of the relationship between the father and the daughter.

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Fathers have a powerful impact on the lives of their children, whether it is for good or for
evil. Sylvia Plath uses comparisons, powerful word choices and demonstrates cause and effect in
the life of the daughter to show the unhappy relationship between the pair. Not every person has
the same experiences growing up and by reading poems such as "Daddy", I have gained more
sympathy for those who have not had an ideal upbringing. The poem has also made me realize
how grateful I am for good parents and that I can have a powerful effect on the people around
me, whether I know it or not.

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Works Cited
Plath, Sylvia. "Daddy." Ariel: The Restored Edition. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. 74-76.
Print.