A Courage’s Attempt to Take Her Life back in Sylvia...

Sylvia Plath a highly acclaimed twentieth century American poet whose writings were mostly influenced by her life experiences. Her father died shortly after her eighth birthday and her first documented attempt at suicide was in her early twenties. She was married at age twenty-three and when she discovered her husband was having an affair she left him with their two children. Her depression and the abandonment she felt as a child and as a woman is what inspires most of her works. Daddy is a major decision point where Plath decides to overcome her father’s death by telling him she will no longer allow his memory to control her. Plath never got over the loss of her father and her failed marriage to well known poet Ted Hughes. She wrote,†¦show more content†¦The poem starts out very assertive: â€Å"You do not do, you do not do / Anymore, black shoe / In which I’ve lived like a foot† ( 1-3) She is telling her father that he does not have a hold on her anymore and that she is releasing herself from the confined space she feels she is in because of his memory. â€Å"For thirty years, poor and white / Barely daring to Breathe or Achoo†.(4-5) She is thirty when she writes this poem and she is telling him that thirty years of feeling oppressed is enough. In the next stanza she talks directly to him â€Å"Daddy, I have had to kill you/ You died before I had time/ Marble-heavy, a bag full of God —† (6-8) In the middle of line seven she leaves her thought half spoken and she seems to drift off into a pensive melancholy moment. The reader could finish this line with â€Å"to get to know you.† Marble-heavy sounds like she may be describing the heart heavy pain she feels over his absence. â€Å"Ghastly statue with one gray toe/Big as a Frisco seal† (9-10) She remembers that she is writing to cut her ties to her father so she has to become assertive and uses language in order to keep her courage. Her father had diabetes, his leg was amputated, and this could be the reason for the reference to the toe. In an article by Sherry Lutz Zivley she writes â€Å"These seemingly obscure details are in fact references to Plaths father: the Ghastly statue with one gray toe is Otto Plaths gangrenous leg, and San