Plath's Powerful use of Imagery and Metaphors.
In the poem "Daddy,"" the speaker, Sylvia Plath confesses her true feelings about her deceased father. Throughout the poem, many instances illustrate a great feeling of hatred toward Plath's father. She uses strong imagery and powerful speech to show her attitudes towards her late father and her husband. Plath describes her relationship and feelings of guilt, fear, and pain that her dad's death had caused her. The tone of this poem is that of an adult engulfed in outrage and who often changes into childlike dialect; this is evident when the speaker continually uses the word "daddy- and also repeats herself often. Plath uses imagery heavily in her poem to express her struggles in life. She casts her father into different metaphors throughout the poem. Her images of her father compared him to God, a Nazi, the Devil, and a vampire. Plath describes her feelings about men and death and how they are related.
Plath's use of imagery and the style in her poems have intrigued the thoughts of many critics. Her carefully chosen images are analyzed by M.D. Uroff, in his essay "Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A Reconsideration."" She is skilled at image-making, " the images themselves are important for what they tell us of her sense of being victimized and victimizer but more significant than the actual image is the swift ease with which she can turn it to various uses- (Uroff). Plath's unique style is interpreted by Caroline King Barnard Hall in "Sylvia Plath, Revised- as being child-like. The sounds and rhythms in "Daddy- "has clear .
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affinities with the nursery rhyme, a mode that provides an obviously ironic structure. The nursery rhyme may have provided for Plath an essential manic defense against the insufferable- (Hall 101).