Daddy

As part of the confessional poetry movement, this poem shows the speaker’s—presumably Plath’s—complicated and dark relationship with her actual father (“you” or “daddy”). Plath slowly unfolds references and visuals that depict the different facets of the man’s appearance and influence, building upon each description and metaphor until she reaches her breaking point in the final line with “I’m through.”

Stanza 1 immediately sets up the irregular rhyme of “oo” that pervades the poem, particularly the ending word of lines: “You do not do” (Line 1). She uses synecdoche to compare her father to a “black shoe” (Line 2) in which she has lived like a “foot” (Line 3). It’s clear from the start that this subservient, obedient feeling has been going on “for thirty years” (Line 4).

Stanza 2 first mentions the word “daddy” (Line 6) and the fact that he died before she could get past her worship of him: “You died before I had time” (Line 7). She suggests this idolatry and the idea that his presence was larger-than-life with “a bag full of God” (Line 8). She even reveals his physical stature to be large when she states that his toe was as “big as a Frisco seal” (Line 10), alluding to the giant sea lions in San Francisco.