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Essay / Summary of the poem Daddy - 793
In Plath's poem "Daddy", she recounts her journey to become familiar with the image of her father. The poem begins with "you don't, you don't", meaning that her father has not been a great parent since she was raised "poor and white". While she remained raised in this manner, she felt trapped, "barely daring to breathe or achoo." Living in such conditions led the speaker to have delusions of killing her father, but he was "...dead before I had the time." Currently, she has mixed feelings towards her father. He was “heavy with marble, a bag full of God,” a “horrible statue…” who towered over her to keep her in control of what she did. She “… prayed…” to her father, but gives the “Ach, du” of pity. The poem then talks about the village in Poland while the speaker and her father continue to speak in German. The speaker tries to but the man she modeled her father after is much worse than he was and refers to his appearance as "Meinkampf". She might have an Electra complex because at the end she says "yes, I want" to a man who has similar characteristics to her father. She is now “…finally done” with her father and the memories in which he rests. But the “…voices” that try to reach her cannot convince her otherwise. The speaker has now “…killed two – the vampire who said he was you.” She says the man she was married to was extremely draining for a very long time. She had now told her father that he "...could lie down now" once again since she was trying to rid himself of him from her memory. Alluding to the work of Dracula, she claims that there is "...a stake in your big black heart" and that "...the villagers never loved you" as they "...dance and stomp..." on his grave. The speaker finalizes her poem with a beat, saying that she is "finished" and calls it