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The first two stanzas of the poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath are deceptively simple and sound more like a strange nursery rhyme than an angry depiction of the speaker’s father. An analysis of the straight rhyme scheme in “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath lulls the reader into a hypnotic state and the language is relatively free from the kind of ominous and dark imagery and terms that will arrive as the poem by Sylvia Plath progresses. This nursery rhyme’s innocence is obliterated quickly with each and with the images and language of Nazism and several weighty references to horrible wars. Although the reader of the poem gets the impression of the “daddy” depicted in the poem by Sylvia Plath, he does not exist outside of images of men from history or historical photographs. He is, in many senses, a bland character rather unworthy of analysis since there is nothing that separates him a common Nazi—or even Hitler himself. In this sense, the father in “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath cannot be viewed outside of these images from history and thus he loses any realistic character traits in favor of this more generic description of a “typical” fascist.
The only image of the speaker’s father in "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath the reader is given that is original, that is, outside of stereotyped images of Nazis or soldiers, is the rather absurd picture of a man comes in one of the important set of lines in “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, “Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, / Ghastly statue with one gray toe / Big as a Frisco seal.” While it may not make sense for the speaker to combine such images as a heavy bad, a grim statue, and a giant seal, it is important to point out that these are all weighty and gray objects or images. It would be easy to think at this early stage of analysis of "Daddy" by Syliva Plath that this is simply because the man is portly, but as the poem by Sylvia Plath continues it seems as though she is conjuring up a different kind of weight for the reader—a spiritual weight. The...