Analysis of Full Fathom Five by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's "Full Fathom Five" is the first poem about her father as a sea god. She describes the majestic and dangerous qualities about him and eventually she explains his presence in her life and her wish to join him in the sea. The title "Full Fathom Five" comes from Shakespeare's The Tempest in which the spirit Ariel sings "full fathom five thy father lies/Of his bones are coral made."

The first noticeable aspect of "Full Fathom Five" is the structure. The poem is organized into short, three-lined stanzas. Plath uses enjambment throughout most of the poem, making her train of thought more complex and chopped up. When she uses enjambment, her sentences are often inverted and she is usually writing an intricate description of her father. There are several instances where she directly addresses the sea god as "You", "Old man" and "Father". These parts of the poem are short and are one liners, which give them a more straightforward and direct effect.

The diction throughout the poem demonstrates the range of emotions she feels towards her father after his death. She describes him in great detail as a sea god-he's very majestic, almost unreal, with "radial sheaves" in his "spread hair" that "miles long extend." He is revered as powerful and defiant ("You defy questions; You defy other godhood"). She talks about him the way a loving daughter would about her father. At the same time, everything about him is compared to a second love, the ocean. His hair is like a "dragnet" (a fishing net dragged along the bottom of a body of water) that rises and falls with the waves as they "crest and trough". He surfaces "with the tide's coming" and she remembers his "shelled bed" (where he is buried). The "archaic trenched lines" of his "grained face" are washed away in "runnels". The comparison between her father and the sea convey the sense that he is actually part of the sea. When she looks at the sea, she sees him and longs to join him. She recalls his "the "muddy rumors of [his] burial" yet his "reappearance proves rumors shallow", meaning that although she knows of his funeral (which she never attended) and knows that he is dead, her father is very much alive in her mind. He is close, but is a "keeled ice-mountain" whose "dangers are many" and needs "to be steered clear of, not fathomed". On land, she still remains "dry" on the outskirts of his "kingdom's border" (the sea) and she cannot enter because she is "exiled to no good". She explains that "this thick air is murderous" implying that life is killing her and she "would breathe water" if she could to be with him.

Mythological and maritime images are used to describe her father and his presence in her life. The main focus is the sea god image. He appears as a Poseidon/Neptune-like force that is powerful and something that she is captivated by. He moves throughout her life and shakes up her world by making away with "the ground-work of the earth and the sky's ridgepole". Yet even though he is present, the sea god is unreachable. He lives in the ocean and she must stay on land even though she longs to join him. The loved-and-lost tone that permeates the poem expresses the feelings that Plath still has towards her father. By describing him and the effect he had on her life, she builds up emotion and conveys the love she holds for him. In the first line and last stanza, she begins and ends with somber, short sentences that imply her sense of lost and longing.
In essence, "Full Fathom Five" explains the relationship that Plath has with her father, even after his death. She realizes that he has passed on many years ago, but his memory and influence is so intense, that he is more alive than dead to her. This can be reiterated by the fact that Plath did not go to his funeral and did not see him dead. Intellectually, she understands that her father died when she was eight years old, but emotionally she still feels his presence very strongly. Plath wrote several other poems about her father such as "Daddy", "Electra on Azalea Path", "The Beekeeper's Daughter" and "The Colossus."