Style Analysis-"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

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Style Analysis: The Theme of Gender in "Daddy" Sylvia Plath lived during a time when feminism was on the rise and women's rights movements were occurring more than ever. The sad history she shared with her father and husband had a large influence on her thought process regarding feminism, women's rights. In the poem "Daddy", Sylvia Plath uses the cruel and grotesque image of her father to reveal her serious hatred toward all men; she also addresses feminism and reveals her twisted perception of women's relationship with men, in which she believes that women are the victims of totalitarian males. Throughout the poem, Plath creates a dark image of her father and uses it to resemble the male population and to show how she feels about the men that have abused her in her life. For example, the author imagines that her father is a "ghastly statue with one gray toe / Big as a Frisco seal / [with] a head in the freakish Atlantic" (9-11). The word "ghastly" gives us the image of a demonic gargoyle atop a medieval church. This implies that the author is comparing her father, along with all other men, to the devil. This comparison shows how Plath thought men were evil and sinful, most likely because her father abused and abandoned her when she was young, and also because her husband caused her the same misery that her father did in the past. After both of these terrible relationships, it seems that she began to resent men and her strong feelings are explicitly shown in the poem. Plath implies that this metaphorical stature stretches from the Atlantic all the way to San Francisco. This enormous statue represents the weight that male dominance imposes on women all across the United States. The statue's colossal size shows how Sylvia felt that all men were infinitely superior to her and that she would always be inferior. Later on in the poem, the author compares her father
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