Essays on Daddy By Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath’s poem Daddy” is a dark, intense and personal look at her relationship with her father and her feelings of rage and betrayal after his death. The poem is written in the form of a dramatic monologue, with the speaker addressing her father directly. The speaker begins by describing her father as a “black man” with a “Meinkampf look” and a “bag full of tricks.” She goes on to say that she used to be afraid of him, but now she is not. She says that he died when she was ten years old, and she has been trying to kill him ever since. She describes how she has tried to kill him with knives and with poison, but he always comes back. She says that she will never be able to kill him completely, because he is inside her head. In the final stanza, the speaker says that she is through with trying to kill her father, and she is going to kill herself instead.”