Daddy

by Sylvia Plath

Daddy
By Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, American, School, Dark, 20th Century

5 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the most influential and emotionally powerful authors of the 20th century. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she demonstrated literary talent from an early age, publishing her first poem at the age of eight. Her early life was shaped by the death of her father, Otto Plath, when she was eight years old, a trauma that would profoundly influence her later work.
Plath attended Smith College, where she excelled academically but also struggled privately with depression. In 1953, she survived a suicide attempt, an experience she later fictionalized in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. After recovering, she earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Newnham College, Cambridge, in England. While there, she met and married English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. Their relationship was passionate but tumultuous, with tensions exacerbated by personal differences and Hughes's infidelities.
Throughout her life, Plath sought to balance her ambitions as a writer with the demands of marriage and motherhood. She had two children with Hughes, Frieda and Nicholas, and continued to write prolifically. In 1960, her first poetry collection, The Colossus and Other Poems, was published in the United Kingdom. Although it received modest critical attention at the time, it laid the foundation for her distinctive voice—intensely personal, often exploring themes of death, rebirth, and female identity.
Plath's marriage unraveled in 1962, leading to a period of intense emotional turmoil but also extraordinary creative output. Living with her two children in London, she wrote many of the poems that would posthumously form Ariel, the collection that would cement her literary legacy. These works, filled with striking imagery and raw emotional force, displayed her ability to turn personal suffering into powerful art. Poems like "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" remain among her most famous, celebrated for their fierce honesty and technical brilliance.
In early 1963, following a deepening depression, Plath died by suicide at the age of 30. Her death shocked the literary world and sparked a lasting fascination with her life and work. The posthumous publication of Ariel in 1965, edited by Hughes, introduced Plath's later poetry to a wide audience and established her as a major figure in modern literature. Her novel The Bell Jar was also published under her own name shortly after her death, having initially appeared under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas."
Plath’s work is often classified within the genre of confessional poetry, a style that emphasizes personal and psychological experiences. Her fearless exploration of themes like mental illness, female oppression, and death has resonated with generations of readers and scholars. Over time, Plath has become a feminist icon, though her legacy is complex and occasionally controversial, especially in light of debates over Hughes's role in managing her literary estate and personal history.
Today, Sylvia Plath is remembered not only for her tragic personal story but also for her immense contributions to American and English literature. Her work continues to inspire writers, artists, and readers worldwide. Collections such as Ariel, Crossing the Water, and Winter Trees, as well as her journals and letters, offer deep insight into her creative mind. Sylvia Plath’s voice, marked by its intensity and emotional clarity, remains one of the most haunting and enduring in modern literature.

Reviews

[Hossein Sharifi · Rating 5 out of 5]

in this poem Sylvia Plath used some metaphors and imagery to show how she was a victim of her father or perhaps her husband.
by using some German words the speaker is showing that her German father is like a Nazi and therefore she is a Jew. At the end of this poem, the metaphor for the speaker's father and husband, and potentially all men, shifts from Nazis to vampires.The vampire has sucked the narrator's blood for seven years, probably the length of their marriage. This is a vivid metaphor for the pain she has been bearing.
it's the ironical title of the poem 'daddy' which suggest firstly how cute a father can be, but now is like a monster or somehow a Nazi. so there is an internal struggle between loving and hating her deceased father.

whenever I read Plath's poems, her depression and her committing suicide appear right in front o my eyes. how sad one's life could be!

don't listen to its audio version.if you don't want to burst into tears!

[Aditya Mallya · Rating 5 out of 5]

The audacity of using Holocaust metaphors to describe your personal life - holy smokes, what a brilliant poem.

[Naia Pard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luke Skywalker couldn`t have said it better.

Instagram\\my Blog\\

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poem remains one of the most contentious modern poems ever written. It is a shadowy, unreal, and at times excruciating metaphor that uses allegory and other devices to carry the idea of a female victim finally freeing herself from her father.

In Plath’s own words: ‘This poem is written through the vantage point of a girl suffering from Electra complex, a condition where she has an unresolved, unconscious libidinous desire for her father.

This girl is none other than Plath herself. Plath’s father died when she was just eight years old; a time when he was like God to her. As she grew up the imago of her father began to create troubles for her. Her father’s strong dominance over her mind had caused her frustration. This frustration had led her into depression. The poem Daddy’ shows Plath’s struggle to overthrow his dominance.’

The allusion to her father as a ‘shoe’ wherein she has “lived like a foot” tells us how trapped she has felt in her father’s memories. The memories had subjugated her so much that she could barely dare to breathe or sneeze.

According to the Freudian psychology, at some stages in its development, a child is ‘in love’ with the parent. Having died at such a stage in her development, Plath spits abhorrence for her father in the poem.

In the second stanza, Plath portrays her father as ‘marble heavy’ and a ‘ghastly statue’. He being also linked with the beauty of the sea, Plath seems to act ambivalent here. These love-hate feelings of Plath for her father had stayed with her for so long, that they have eventually began to snag her sensitively.

Hence, to arrive at some sort of relief, Plath finds it fundamental to obliterate the memory of her father.

The line “Daddy, I have had to kill you” shows the metaphorical murder of her father to have been an inevitability —the word ‘had’ in the line expresses this and shows the poet’s desperation noticeably.

“Ghastly statue with one gray toe / Big as a Frisco seal / And a head in the freakish Atlantic” proposes that the statue of her father stretches from the Atlantic to San Francisco .

Incongruous to the tone of the second stanza, the line “I used to pray: recover you” in third stanza shows that no matter how much hatred she has cherished so far for him, she still was awfully psychologically attached to him. The attachment is so much that she would pray to God to bring him back from the dead.

In the next two stanzas, Plath verbalizes about her attempts to discover her father’s origins. Like many, her father migrated to America during the Second World War although she knows that he hailed from a Germans peaking town of Poland, due to war the town is now unrecognizable and the German spoken there is lost. Despite knowing the name of his town, she fails to discover his roots, for the name is so common that it doesn’t serve its purpose anymore.

Through these two lines, “I never could talk to you. I the tongue stuck in my jaw”, Plath tell us about how terrorised she used to be as a child when she was with her father.

This fear is given a different level of intensity, by associating it with the persecution of Jews during Hitler’s reign.

“It stuck in a barb wire snare” - the jaw representing the barb wires of the concentrate camps.

From here on, for the next five stanzas, Plath recounts her memory to that of the Jewish Holocaust. The Plaths, as other German Americans, were horrified by Hitler’s deeds and followed the news from Europe intimately. As a child, the death of her father concurring with appalling hazards arising from her father’s home country might be the reason why Plath correlates Hitler the Nazis, and the Jewish maltreatment with some of her ill memories related to her father.

Also, these historical references, allow her to sensationalize the insurgence against her tyrannical father.

“Ich, ich, ich, ich, / I could hardly speak” the word ‘ich’ in this line like a barb wire of the German language that examines Plath’s tongue and then cuts it off as the language isn’t hers but her father’s.

The duplication of ‘ich’ gives a stammering effect, emphasizing the fact that she didn’t know how to speak German. The repetitive self-assertive ‘ich’ of the German language summons up the sound of the engines carrying Jews to the concentration camps.

In revolt of the obscenity of the language, which is an extension of the emotional revolt against the father, the daughter begins to “talk like Jew”; that is, she identifies herself with the tormented Jews of the concentration camps. References to Dachau, Auschwitz, and Belsen support the scale Plath’s mental torment.

Plath’s claim of she might be a “hit of a Jew” combined with the fact she is to some extent German intensifies her emotional paralysis for her father with whom she is both connected with adore and antagonism.

Commenting on the persona in a BBC interview, Plath herself said that “the two strains of Nazi and Jew unite in the daughter and paralyze each other so the girl is doubt incapacitated to deal with her sense of her father, both by virtue of the mixed ethnicity and her childish perspective. As the persona recalls the father of her early years, she emphasizes and blends the two perspectives impotence: that of the child before its father and of the Jew before the Nazi.’

The usage of ‘cadences’ from nursery rhymes and the usage of baby words such as “Chuffing,” “Achoo,” and “Gobbledygoo” give the poem a child’s standpoint. The phrase “Scared of you” also shows childhood talk, but in earnest. The word “Gobbledygoo” in the following line has a similar effect. However, having been applied to her father that ‘word does not make much sense. It seems that it was chosen mainly for reasons of rhyme and for infusing the speech of a child.

The ‘neat moustache’ is an allusion to Hitler’s moustache. The bright blue Aryan eyes refer to the Nazi symbol of racial purity. The German word for a tank is ‘Panzer’ and the men who manned German army tanks were called “panzer—men”. The use of such terminology subtly connects Plath’s father with Nazi Germany.

By the tenth stanza, Plath no longer associates her father with God but with a swastika. She describes him as a Nazi officer. By making him a Nazi and herself a Jew, Plath very cleverly dramatizes the war in her soul. In the lines, “The boot in the face, the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you”, Plath is furious; apart from the diction used, this effect seems to brought about well by the 00 rhyme used extensively in the poem.

In the eleventh stanza, Plath describes a picture of her father. The man at the blackboard in the picture of her father is transformed symbolically into the “man in black with a Meinkampf look.” The link between each of these associations is the word “black,” which also relates to the shoe in which the Plath has lived and the swastika, “So black no sky could squeak through.”

“No not / Any less the black man who / Bit my pretty red heart in two.” These lines bring in a new character in the poem; the character is her husband Ted Hughes. In the twelfth stanza, Plath tells us about her attempt at committing suicide in the past, at the age of twenty. She attempted to commit suicide with the desire to join her father amongst the dead. The line “I thought even the bones would do” shows how desperate she was to join him.

Having failed in committing suicide to escape her father fixation, Plath chose another man who had many of her father’s characteristics, in the hope that his presence will exorcise her obsession with her father. The line “And I said I do, I do” confirms Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes.

The final two stanzas of the poem discard the well-established Jew-Nazi allegory. The vampire-husband who impersonates the Nazi-father sucks her blood for seven years —the length of their marriage. “And drank my blood for a year, / Seven years, if you want to know” This is a vivid metaphor for the pain that their relationship must have caused Plath.

Plath shows awareness that her rage is partly a tantrum by allowing the cruelty to be depicted childishly. Her psychology portrayed in the last stanza goes like this: Daddy died and hurt me; so, he must be a bastard. I hate him for his cruelty; everyone else hates him too: “the villagers never liked you.”

As ‘daddy’ is a vampire only in Plath’s mind, the line “the villagers never liked you” seems less credible.

As the last stanza proceeds, there is a steady discharge of concealed annoyance, building to the victorious dismissal: “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”

Plath knows that the Nazis and the vampires are her self-created mental images. But she still persists in relating to them as if they were real.

Finally when she lets go of these images, she has nothing left and she is finished —“through”. In due course, Plath announces herself liberated, both from the grip of her wraithlike father and her husband.

Finally, however, Plath begins to fight back again her father’s malign influence. Leaving her husband, she has, in her mind, also left her father “I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two.”

Recognizing the manner that her father has sucked at her life-force, she smacks a blow against it. “There’s in your fat, black heart.” She cannot do this alone, as she is still too feeble against his force, but with the “villagers” she can manage it. She finds by her side the other women, the other people, browbeaten and scared, who to end with rise up and annihilate their oppressors.

With their strength, potency and effectiveness, she can purge his influence from her battered psyche.

She can assert, although not altogether persuasively, that “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”

The poem is a fuming effort to cleanse her father’s control from her life. Losing him at an early age, she has never been able to patch up to his loss or to the existence of his specter in her life. Despite him being compared to a Nazi, a fiend, a vampire, she still loves him and cannot rebuff his memory.

Even as the poem concludes with her declaring herself, the reader knows she is not. She still thinks of him as “daddy” and knows that within months of the poem’s creation, she will have joined daddy as her second suicide attempt succeeds.

From his pointless death up until her death, the sequence is completed.

[EJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first time I'm reading Plath with full dedication and it blew me away. A poem which ranges from innocent child-talk to dark, disturbing Holocaust images leaves you emotionally drained, and rightly so. Such is the passion and brutal honestly which comes across. Plath does not shy away from wrapping the whole poem in a blanket of somberness, leaving you no way to escape. You feel the weight of her love, hatred, and helplessness as your own. A gem of a poem.

[Arghavan-紫荆 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every woman adores a Fascist.

[Diya Waghmare · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE THIS. Please listen to Sylvia Plath recite it if you ever read it.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10

[flaams · Rating 4 out of 5]

an incredibly beautiful, yet heart-wrecking tale of fear, hatred and release.
Sylvia Plath tries in this marvellous poem to forgive her father for what he has, or has not, been for her...
He died when she was 10, but she still remembers his figure, the fear he used to instill in her, so much so that she would never learn German, her mother tongue, because when he spoke it, it meant that something bad was going to happen.
But fear is not the only sentiment this poem arouses. Anger and hatred are deeply rooted in the entire composition, she hated him for not showing his love enough, she hated him so much, she was angry at herself, 10 years after his death, she tried committing suicide, and he was getting closer and closer... But after that, after that failed attempt she is free, "the black telephone is cut at the root" she says and she is finally free.

[灰 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The destruction and distancing of intolerable male figures? This is my cup of tea! („• ֊ •„)

I do feel like this could have been better. Plath seemed disassociated with the event of the Holocaust which made it quite difficult to connect. Having the balls to compare one’s life to that of a very traumatic event is definitely bad ass though.

She deserves points for being badass.

[Lubat · Rating 5 out of 5]

SPEECHLESS!
THIS IS LITERALLY PERFECTION!!!!

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the many Plath poems I studied in my final year of high school, and undoubtedly one of my favourites. Every time I re-read it, I find new meaning and symbolism, which I absolutely love in poetry. I was inspired to pick this up again after watching a documentary about the life of Ted Hughes, in which Plath is heavily featured.

The running metaphor of comparing her father/husband to vampires is brilliant.

"If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart."


I really wish I had appreciated this more when I first read it.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"At twenty I tried to die
they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue"

[Tegan Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first introduction to Sylvia Plath, honestly I’m in adoration of the poetic nature and confessional language of her work absolutely otherworldly and widely relatable, easily understood and recognisable feelings that relay generations since her passing.

[tatiana ❦ · Rating 5 out of 5]

might or might not be getting into poems lately. I LOVED THIS!!

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd give five stars for "If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two—— / The vampire who said he was you" alone

[Sooz✧˖*°࿐ · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an interesting yet controversial way to address your own dad. The hatred for your own Father but also the longing for him after his death

[Summer Leann White · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way that Sylvia’s anger, fear, and hurt is described in this poem is controversial, yet powerful.

[suman!! · Rating 5 out of 5]

the last stanza really did it for me

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luister naar de audioversie!!

[*Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.'

[valia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

[Dunya Al-bouzidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time.."

[Henry Winter · Rating 5 out of 5]

"At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue."

[Mary Thelma · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I’m through."

[Maddie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm all for the feminism, not so much for the comparing the experience of being a woman to being a Jewish person in the Holocaust.

[marta! · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sylvia Plath, you are (were) insane (literally).

[Mikala Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rated 4 stars because it call me out on the relationship with my father. Shows the pain the girl goes through, and how uses that to rise above it.
“I used to pray to recover you.” I used to do that, and I still do that today.
“I thought every German was you.” When a girl grows up, she looks for a man that is like her father. It it’s a good reputation, she looks for that. The same goes for if it’s a bad reputation.
Not only that we began to act on how we were taught or loved. For example, the writer wrote, “I began to talk like a Jew, I think I may well be a Jew.”
“I have always have been scared of you.” Relate to me.
“Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.” That quote just stood out to me.
“And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,” At that point the writer decided to rise above.
“Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”

[Rawabi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this millions of times. And every time i read it feels like the first time.. Sylvia just brought me to tears When i listened to it by her voice. omg.. If u haven't listened to it please do!! idk what to say. I really dont. Crying off my face again. I wish Sylvia was here so I could tell her: " i feel u Sylvia. I immensely DO...."