Sylvia Plath's Poem Daddy: A Review

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

If there is no hope would there be any sense in life? What is left for us to do? Should we escape or face the nothingness of meaning head-on? Is it fitting to take your own life? Or should we just let things be what they are and ignore every circumstance?

The persona of the poem is overwhelmed with despair and grief throughout life because of her experiences that resulted in the denial of her own identity, her human capability which lead her to the suicidal state. She tries to hold on to her faith and well-being but at the end of the day, it seems it is only illusory. Although she tries to enchant herself in a dream, reality always destroys it. There is no one to blame but the horizons she lives in. She has lost trust from the men in her world who she thought were the hope she could hold on to. The shame and sorrow leads her to a downward spiral that ultimately led to her own destruction. Although she tried to kill the ghosts of her past, it always seems to haunt her and assimilate despair in her. With nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and no one to turn to, she chose the path of self-destruction. The world, the persona realized, turned out to be something where selfish evil hearts resides, where fingers have no purpose than to pull triggers and men's souls worship only the god of tragedy.

This poem's writer seems to implicitly narrate the tragedy of her own life using metaphors. Sylvia Plath was an American aspiring writer in Europe. There she met her husband who was also a good poet. During the course of their marriage, Sylvia was filled by pressure for her husband was a fast-rising poet while she was busy with the household work. However, after some time she was able to write again but her husband was beginning to be unfaithful. Until such time that she was able to verify that her husband has indeed another woman. What drove her to the suicidal path was not only because of her self-pity and blind innocence but because of her childhood experiences, which the author implies. What could be grasped by the readers from this piece is that her experience as spouse, as a mother and as a child was no different. She tried to hold on for her children; however, her rationality was clouded by her despair. Probably what drove her to kill herself was the fact that her husband was unfaithful and would never return to her, and implicitly so was her father.

The poem can be seen as dedicated either for her father or her husband or for the both of them. The pain she felt impelled her to the point of losing her own identity and relating it to the Jewish experience during the Holocaust wherein every Jew was killed whenever, wherever.

With accordance to the question whether poetry is confessional in nature, the answer would be that it is not entirely so. Although poetry is a reflection of natural phenomena, the way it resents its message is, however, far from it. The writer depicts her experiences as if she was a Jewish refugee at the time of Hitler and yet she is an American.

Poetry is not entirely literal. Poetry is not confessional for it employs a variety of literary devices. The devices used in it are far from the main purpose of its writing. A poem becomes dreary when the whole story is revealed. A poem is not a poem if it presents its content in absolute evidence and clarity. It is a manipulation of facts and molds it in to something either dreadful or desirable. A poem is like a dream. The beauty of it is that it is a fantasy, once we wake up, we cannot return to it. Looking at the poem by Sylvia Plath, we could deduce that poetry is not reality. The message is painted with enchanting and morbid words that the history of why it was written was concealed. We, the readers, become lavished in some sort of sweet poison that we become entranced as we read. The point of why it was written becomes implied rather than explicated.

In addition, poetry does not always pertain to its author. It is improper for a reader to assume that everything that is indicated in the text is always the literal experience of the writer. According to literary theories, in understanding poetry you must isolate the text from the author. The reader must take the text as it is, and not relate it to its author entirely. A literary work loses its essence when it is fixed to one literal meaning. When a reader associates the details in the poem to the author literally, chances are, the reader would never grasp the objective of the poet.

At first reading, you would easily notice the intense rage of the persona of the poetry. Every word and every pause, it would lead you to think that the poem is like a narration of her experience. But then again, poetry is not necessarily confessional. It is the role of the poet to make his or her poem sensational and creative in some ways. Moreover, if the author presents out rightly the message of the poem, the poem itself becomes tedious and unexciting to read. In the contemporary times, the poets are expected to be creative in their masterpieces. We do not live in the 18^th century wherein poetry should follow a certain standard, or ideology such as formalism.

In conclusion, the poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath is not confessional, and even all other poetry. Looking at the poem, although it depicts her childhood and adult experiences, it is done in an implicit manner and in a more fascinating, interesting way. Her life is rather implied in the lines. We could then say that poetry is crafted using imagination and creativity though it reflects reality in some ways. Therefore, poetry that is confessional is fashioned by narrating the exact experience in just a poetic approach.