How Do the Poets Convey the Relationship Between Father and Child in the Poems "Daddy" and "Those Winter Sundays"

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How do the poets convey the relationship between father and child in the poems “Daddy” and “Those Winter Sundays” In this essay I will compare the way in which the father – child relationship is conveyed in the poems “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert E. Hayden. In both poems the speaker talks about their relationship with their father and how they each deal with the problems created in their family environment. They also both comment on how their fathers’ death is dealt with. To begin with Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”, Plath talks about her relationship with her father, who died when she was eight years old. For as long as he lived Plath was under the control of her father, “black shoe / In which I have lived like a foot”, and in generally a strict family, “Barely daring to breath or Achoo”. This is where the speaker shows her hatred towards her father which is also evident in the second stanza where she says “Daddy, I have had to kill you.” This shows how she wanted out of her life, but “[he] died before [she] had time”, referring to his death. Even though Plath admires her father and looks up to him, referring to him as “a bad full of God”, she is still frightened of him and refers to him as a “ghastly statue”, but with flaws, “gray toe”. In addition, Plath compares her relationship with her father with the relationship between the Nazis and the Jews in the Second World War. “Chuffing me off like a Jew / … to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen” describes her difficult and harsh life and the obstacles she had to face while living with her father. Even though her father and she did not have a good relationship, she still “[prayed] to recover [him]” showing her love for him and when she tried to commit suicide she thought she would get “back to [him]”. Further more, Sylvia Plath suffered from a syndrome called Electra complex, which is

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