Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. Born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge, before receiving praise as a poet and writer. Sylvia was clinically depressed for most of her life, and committed suicide in 1963. In 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems. Plath is a well-known feminist writer. Sylvia has always felt that she is inferior to men and was victimized greatly by her father. Sylvia's own experiences with the men in her life comes out in a lot of her writing, and this style of writing is common for her. Her writing seems to be her response to the oppression she felt from men. Sylvia could face her father, and never found closure with the abuse she felt so she used her styling techniques and strong metaphors to feel some sort of relief.
Sylvia was also tortured by her husband, and she was victimized by him just like she was by her father. She felt that she was inferior to him, and this showed in her early works, like in "A life ". However, in later works, she overcomes the victimization she felt and uses her experiences as an advantage in her writing. She even metaphorically kills her father in "Daddy." "Daddy" was written on October 12, 1962. The poem is viewed as to be about Sylvia's deceased father, Otto Plath. They had a very complicated relationship, and Plath felt victimized by her father. Sylvia creates a figurative image of her father, using many different metaphors to describe her relationship with him. She compares him to a Nazi, which is supposedly based on the idea that her real father was a Nazi sympathizer and her mother very possibly part Jewish. She felt like she could never talk to him, and that she felt distant from him. In fact, she felt so distinct from him that she believed herself a Jew being removed to a concentration camp.