Daddy, Vampires, Black Hearts
Uploaded by Admin on Jan 22, 1999
In the poem "Daddy", Sylvia Plath says that there are women who, due to early conditioning, find themselves without the tools to deal with oppressive and controlling men. They are left feeling helpless and hopeless. For some women, the struggle is never resolved, others take most of a lifetime. For a lucky few, they are granted a reprieve.
The speaker in this poem is Sylvia Plath. The poem describes her feelings of oppression and her battle to come to grips with the issues of this power imbalance. The poem also conjures the struggle many women face in a male dominated society.
The conflict of this poem is male authority and control versus the right of a female to be herself, to make choices, and be free of male domination. Plath's conflicts begin in her relationship with her father and continues with her husband. The intensity of this conflict is extremely apparent as she uses examples that cannot be ignored. The atrocities of NAZI' Germany are used as symbols of the horror of male domination. The constant and crippling manipulation of the male, as he introduces oppression and hopelessness into the lives of his women, is equated with the twentieth century's worst period. Words such as Luftwaffe, panzerman, and Meinkampf look are used to descibe her father and husband as well as all male domination. The frequent use of the word black throughout the poem conveys a feeling of gloom and suffocation.
Like many women in society, we know that Plath felt oppressed and stifled throughout her life by her use of the simile "I have lived like a shoe for thirty years poor and white, barely able to breath or Achoo." The use of similes and metaphors such as "Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belson." and "I think I may well be a Jew" clearly shows the feelings of anguished hopelessness and the ripping agony she must have felt. The agelessness of this poem is guaranteed as there will always be women who feel the same torture that is described. .
Strong images are conveyed throughout the poem. The words "marble-heavy, a.bag full of God" conveys the omniscience of her father's authority and the heaviness it weighed on her throughout her life. "The vampire who said he was you, and drank my blood for a year, seven years if you want to know" describe her husband and...