Daddy
Aspects of Sylvia Plath’s life are subtly captured in her poem, Daddy. In the poem she writes of the two significant men in her life-her father and her husband. The details vary as they are a combination of truth and symbolism. For example, elements of her own life are captured when she writes, “I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die. And get back, back, back to you.” An example of the mixture of truth and symbolism can be found in the line, “If I've killed one man, I've killed two--The vampire who said he was you, And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know." It is clear to see the truth-that she was married seven years, mixed with the symbolism-that a vampire sucked her blood. The vampire is symbolic of her husband who caused her much pain and misery perhaps contributing to her depression that eventually led to her suicide.
Plath possibly was writing this way to express her confusion with the relationships she had with the men in her life, as they contributed in the construction of her depressed reality. I think she would agree that there is no autobiography; only art and lies as Plath has successfully created an art out of subtle twisted truths rather than creating an account based autobiography.
Plath possibly was writing this way to express her confusion with the relationships she had with the men in her life, as they contributed in the construction of her depressed reality. I think she would agree that there is no autobiography; only art and lies as Plath has successfully created an art out of subtle twisted truths rather than creating an account based autobiography.