3. I expected “Daddy” to be a daughter talking about her deceased father. I had read the Protean Poetic: the Poetry of Sylvia Plath before I read the poem and even that didn’t prepare me for what I read. There are some parts where it sounds like she’s really talking about her father, but really she’s talking about Nazi Germany and calling them daddy. In one stanza I questioned myself, “Was her mother a Jewish woman and her father a German man?” I remember hearing in one of my history classes that if you even looked like you were Jewish they sent you to a camp. So, I was wondering, was she a Jew or did she look like one to them. “I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.”
The end of the poem sounds like it’s the end of the war and all the Jews were being set free. “There’s a stake in your fat black heart and the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard. I’m through.” It sounds like a revolt almost. Overall this poem is interesting and kind of confusing.
4. A Chinese Banquet-
This poem caught me by surprise. I thought it was going to be about Chinese family tradition or Chinese family get together that was pleasant. Boy was I wrong. She talks about how it’s not a formal affair, saying all the women over a 12 wore gowns and corsages and mentions she is the only one that doesn’t. She then goes on to talk about the members of the family that pleased everyone. But then she says that her mom asks her when she’ll get a decent job since she is getting older and not any younger, but she no longer asks if she when she is getting married. She begins asking her a bunch of questions. “What are you doing with your life? Why don’t you study computer programming?” But her mother knows she won’t get married so she doesn’t ask. Her daughter is a Lesbian and has a lover. But she doesn’t approve and she makes sure her daughter and her daughter’s lover knows it. The narrator then goes on to the conversation she has to tell her lover, the reason she cannot come to a family event, because she is neither the husband nor wife. But, seeing as how her mother treats her daughter, I don’t think marriage would matter. If anything it would make the matter worse.
Because of my beliefs, I’m against Gay and Lesbian lifestyles, but really? This mother is being very rude towards her daughter. If it were my daughter, I would be shocked and a little sad, but I wouldn’t completely shun them. I wouldn’t ostracize them just because they like their same gender. The daughter would still be family to me and I wouldn’t treat her otherwise.
I, too, found “Daddy” to be interesting yet confusing. I read the poem first and felt I had to read the commentary about it, just to try to make more sense of it. I get the sense that the person who wrote this poem, Sylvia Plath, was a very confused and emotional person. Just based on that one poem, she sounds like a person struggling to find who she is and deal with the turmoil inside her. After reading the poem, I read the introduction and background information again, and it made sense that her father passed away when she was eight. She seems very angry at him throughout the poem, “Daddy, I have to kill you. / You died before I had time” (263). It’s as if she is trying to rid her mind of him, perhaps because his untimely death is so painful to her. The way she speaks of him is cynical and she has a great deal of anger toward him. “I have always been scared of you / With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygook” (264). She is comparing her father to the World War II German air force, which is a pretty bold comparison. With the way she describes him and using this comparison, it seems likely that he was an angry person when he was alive and did not treat her very well. I thought your interpretation of it was intriguing: that she was talking about Nazi Germany while making it seem like she was describing her father. I thought she was describing her father while comparing him to the terror of Nazi Germany, insinuating that he was a horrible person. This poem was nothing like I expected, especially with the frequent German and Jewish comparisons. I have to agree that it is very interesting though!
ReplyDeleteI did a Chinese Banquet as well although I did get a different interpretation of the poem. I felt she actually did not say directly her personal position on the matter, but more of what she wanted to say to her mother and to the rest of the family to feel accepted and loved. In the area of how her mother no longer asks about her getting married, I felt the narrator wanted to “bridge the boundaries” that they formed and how she wants to desperately tell her she is gay and happy. Although we had a different interpretation of the text I believe the context was still connected of how even though people have different views of same sex couples/marriages, family should still be supportive regardless of one’s preference.
ReplyDeleteI am in agreement with you regarding "Daddy". I found the poem to be somewhat conusing and I didn't expect Plath to compare her father to things like a Nazi, a devil or a vampire. It seems like the author was very angry and hurt over her father's death.
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