Analysis Of The Poem Daddy - 1265 Words

At first glance, â€Å"Daddy† appears as a statement of personal triumph and freedom from the looming puppeteer who controls the entire act. Meyers points this out in writing, â€Å"The poem opens with the Plath-speaker exclaiming that she will no longer allow her father, who betrayed her by dying, to oppress her† (80). The following lines from â€Å"Daddy† support Meyers’s claim: â€Å"[y]ou do not do, you do not do / [a]ny more, black shoe / [i]n which I have lived like a foot / [f]or thirty years, poor and white, / [b]arely daring to breath or Achoo† (290). In these lines, the speaker compares her father to a black boot, the boot that she had been crammed inside for thirty years. Referring back to the allusion, Plath expresses that her father had kept restraints on her even long after his death, to which she finally broke free of when she supposedly let him go. In order to give herself justification to cast off her father, the speaker turns him into a loathsome figure of â€Å"extreme malice,† allowing her to reject him completely (Rietz 426). Plath concludes the poem with this same concept in mind: â€Å"[t]here’s a stake in your fat black heart / [a]nd the villagers never like you. / [t]hey are dancing and stamping on you. / [t]hey always knew it you. / [d]addy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through† (292). Plath illustrates how the speaker finally lets go of the father by comparing him to a monster that is slain by a crowd of rioting villagers. 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