Analysis of Plath's Poem Daddy

What relationship is not a “Love-Hate” relationship? As we grow older and mature, we harden like a rock and have to suffer the realization that perfection is a mirage on the horizon. Sylvia Plath makes this clear in the undercurrents of her poem, Daddy. Plath reflects on her suffering, not only of her loss of father, but also on her childhood, rough marriage, and attempted suicide. In the first stanza, Plath makes a reference to …

…is the only thing that can occur in a relationship with so much pain and so much longing. She ends her poem with: “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (line 80). Sylvia Plath uses her poem, Daddy, to express deep emotions towards her father’s life and death. With passionate articulation, she verbally turns her feelings of rage, abandonment, and grief from her childhood into a moving on and growing up state in her adulthood.