Sylvia Plath: An analysis of "Daddy"

The Poem "Daddy", by Sylvia Plath describes the authors relationsship and feelings towards her father, that have also carried over into all of her relationships with men. In the poem her father is shown to be all powerful, Godlike. She describes her feelings that she must kill her father, but at age ten her father dies before she has the chance to "do him in" herself. Because of this her feelings towards him are left unresolved. These unresolved feelings lead to problms in all of her relationships with men, lead to feelings of oppression and control by men. This, I think, is the underlying theme of the poem. The struggle of a woman in a male dominated society. Now I will go through the poem stanza by stanza describing and explaining the images presented.

In the first stanza Plath describes the influence her father has over her. She describes herself as a foot living inside a shoe. The shoe being her father. She describes herself as poor and white inside the shoe. White becaus...