Essay Database

Daddy By Sylvia Plath You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time -- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where …

…amounts of pity and tenderness that impossibly coexist with all the resentment and hatred in "Daddy." This poem is a message directed towards both Plath's recently divorced husband and her real father, toward the former expressing hatred and resentment, and toward the latter expressing not only regret for the mess she has gotten herself into, but also the deep love and sorrow of a woman accepting her beloved father's death for the very first time.