Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, usually made without explicit identification. Plath makes several allusions throughout “Daddy.” Some of these allusions refer to her own life and experience. For instance, the father addressed in the poem bears a strong resemblance to Plath’s own father, Otto Plath. Just like the father in the poem, Otto was a man of German descent who had diabetes and suffered from a gangrenous toe, as alluded to in line 11: “Ghastly statue with one grey toe.” He also worked as a teacher, as referenced in line 51: “You stand at the blackboard, daddy.” These and other references to Plath’s life contribute to the critical reception of “Daddy” as a confessional poem. Other allusions in the poem reference the German Nazi Party and the genocide it perpetrated during World War II. In line 33, the speaker refers to three Nazi concentration camps: “Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.” She also references Adolf Hitler’s political autobiography, Mein Kampf, in line 65: “A man in black with a Meinkampf look.” Taken together, the many allusions in the poem draw a symbolic link between two parallel sets of relationships: Plath and her father, and Jewish people and Nazis.

Apostrophe

Apostrophe (uh-PAW-struh-fee) is a rhetorical figure in which a speaker makes a direct and explicit address, usually to an absent person or to an object or abstract entity. Throughout “Daddy,” the speaker addresses her deceased father. Even though he is no longer physically present in her life, the speaker remains deeply perturbed by the impression he made on her as a child. However, it’s worth noting that, though the first stanza also uses the second-person pronoun, the “you” doesn’t initially refer to her father:

     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.

The opening stanza (lines 1–5) enacts a clever bait and switch. Whereas the title leads the reader to assume that the “you” addressed in the first line is the eponymous “daddy,” we see that the speaker is referring to a “black shoe.” This is a figurative shoe that the speaker has “lived [in]” as if she herself were “like a foot.” That is, the shoe is a metaphorical prison that she associates indirectly with her father’s memory. It isn’t until the second stanza that the speaker directly addresses her father, and therefore announces his legacy as the thing she’s struggling with most: “Daddy, I have had to kill you” (line 6).

Repetition

Plath uses different types of repetition throughout “Daddy” to create a range of rhetorical effects. The first example of repetition appears in the poem’s opening lines (1–2):

     You do not do, you do not do
     Any more, black shoe.

This is an example of a rhetorical technique known as anadiplosis (ANN-uh-dip-LOH-sis), which refers to the repetition of the last word or phrase of one clause at the beginning of the next. Several other rhetorical forms of repetition appear in the poem. For example, Plath uses epizeuxis (EH-pih-ZOOK-sis), which refers to the emphatic repetition of a single word. This technique appears in lines 18 and 27:

     Of wars, wars, wars.

     Ich, ich, ich, ich.

Plath also uses a technique known as antistrophe (an-TIH-struh-fee), in which successive sentences or verses close with the same or similar words. For instance, stanza 7 ends with, “I think I may well be a Jew” (line 35), and stanza 8 ends very similarly: “I may be a bit of a Jew” (40). Finally, there are examples of diacope (die-ACK-uh-pee), in which a word or phrase is repeated with one or more words in between—as with the word “brute” in lines 48–50:

     Every woman adores a Fascist,
     The boot in the face, the brute
     Brute heart of a brute like you.

Taken together, these different kinds of repetition showcase the speaker’s particular habits of speech, and perhaps reflect her tendency to get caught up in compulsive thinking.