A commentary of "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

"Daddy", one of Plaths most famous and detailed autobiographical poems, was written in the last years of her life and is saturated with suppressed anger and dark imagery. The sixteen stanza poem, through Plaths use of ambiguous symbolism, arguably is bitterly addressing Plaths father, who died when she was only eight, and her husband Ted Hughes, who had broken her "pretty red heart in two" (st.12, line 1). The poem is intense with once suppressed emotion, …

…her and a hollow feeling which then links to inevitable death. The contrasts made imply a the confusion in the speaker's mind; the inability to deal with the pain and anger on her own and hence the 'I'm through' points to a giving up, a suicidal intention. The poem arguably points to a problem of male domination in Plath's life, her father's image and her husband's real self, leaving her in conflict with an illusion.