The poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath is a heartbreaking flow of emotions designed to move the hearts of its readers through a select collection of phrases. The phases tell the story of a little girl who loses her father. When she comes off age, she tries to join her father through suicide but she fails (Plath 1992). When her heart heals, the girl elects to replace her loss with a father figure. The father figure turns out to be a monster who obliterates the girl’s concept of men, which she initially based on her father. Daddy is a sad tale of pain, loss and regret, all reflected in a carefully placed collection of short phrases.
The poet begins the journey to her loss by revealing her treasure through the phrase “ a bag full of God ” (Plath 1992). This phrase is most likely a reference to her father, who died when she was still a young girl. The loss of her father was devastating to the little girl and it influenced her life to the extent. After this phrase, she outlines her lack of knowledge about where her father was and to her inability to talk to him.
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The second phrase, “ At twenty I tried to die ” reflects the epitome of the poet’s loss when she attempted to join her father in the afterlife (Plath 1992). Ten years after the burial of the poet’s father, she decides to die by suicide and join him. However, as reflected in this section, someone is able to save her life and perhaps help her heal so that she is determined to heal again. A practical implication of this section implies a process like counseling that enabled the poet to deal with her loss.
The third phrase, “ I made a model of you ” reflects positive progress where the poet tries to move forward from her loss by replacing her treasure (Plath 1992). Based on the phrase and the position in the poem that the poet has placed it, it seems that she replaces her father with a father figure in the form of a husband. She finds a man who reminds her of her father and proceeds to marry her in the hope that he will play a role in her life that is reminiscent of the one her father would have played. Her new relationship brings her joy and happiness and she is now ready to release her father from the obligation of having to look after her.
Unfortunately, the final phrase, “ The vampire who said he was you ” connects to the early parts of the poem where the poet compares her father to Hitler and herself to Jews during the holocaust (Plath 1992). This comparison presents her father as he vilest form of human being, a fact that may create confusion for a casual reader. After all, one has to wonder who a man the poet compares to God at the advent of the poem turns out to be the manifestation of the evilest man in modern history, Adolf Hitler.
However, a close reading of the poem will reveal that the poet’s father died when she was so young that she did not learn much about him. What she would later come to know about her father stems from her interaction with the living manifestation of her father, who is her husband. This husband is a terrible man who makes the poet believe that her father must have been terrible too. Since her opinion of her father has drastically changed, the poet believes that she has killed her father.
This interpretation of the poem aligns itself with a common psychological phenomenon among people who lose loved ones or items that they treasure in life. As a coping mechanism, people tend to attach them to other people or items that remind them of what they lost. In some cases, these new attachments will eventually blur the perception of what was initially lost, perhaps due to unrealistic expectations. Such was the experience outlined in the poem.
References
Plath, S. (1992). Daddy by Sylvia Plath. Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2
