Click here for a short 5 minute documentary film of Dachau concentration camp. It contains some very shocking and disturbing images. Please view these images thoughtfully and carefully and make sure this cannot be viewed by people unprepared or unable to cope with such images. However these are the scenes that Plath was referring to when she refers to Dachau in her poem.
Some questions
What is this poem about?
Comment on the voice of the narrator of this poem.
How is 'daddy' presented throughout the poem?
What different language features does Plath use through the poem
and what do you think her intended effect is on her readers?
Critics have viewed "Daddy" as a response to Plath's complex relationship with her father, Otto Plath, who died shortly after her eighth birthday as a result of undiagnosed diabetes. Nick Mount, an English professor at the University of Toronto called "Daddy" in a lecture about Plath, "probably one of the best poems of the 20th century".
Some definitions
Ach, du = oh you
Ich = I, me, myself
Tyrol = a region of Austria
Vienna = Largest and capital city of Austria
Luftwaffe = German military airforce
Aryan = Aryan race has been used by proponents of ideologically-motivated racism and white supremacism such as in doctrines of Nazism and neo-Nazism. Aryanism developed as a racial ideology that claimed that the Aryan race was a master race.
Panza = tank
Mein Kampf = My Struggle - is an autobiographical manifesto by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, in which he outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany.
Otto Plath - father of Sylvia Plath - probably the main subject of Plath's poem Daddy. He died in 1944 of undiagnosed diabetes when Sylvia Plath was 8.
