Emily Lipson

“Ich, Ich, Ich, Ich”: Confessional Poetry and the Holocaust
“I think I may well be a Jew” (35). Having lived her life at the same time as the events of the Holocaust, though in a different country, the poet Sylvia Plath felt indirectly affected, and she paralleled the affects with her own life. As Plath was a confessional poetry writer, and she included references to the Holocaust in a few of her poems, the reader can see her life was dark. She feels hurt by the death of her father, and images of the Holocaust show her pain. Two of her poems, however, stand out the most with these images; “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”. Being depressed all her life, “Lady Lazarus” was written in 1962, a year before her death, and “Daddy” was written a few months before it. In “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”, images of the Holocaust show how Plath is hurt by her father, and portray her depression and will to die.
Since Plath writes confessional poetry, in all of her poems the reader can see how much she has been hurt by her father’s death. Otto Plath immigrated from Grabow, Germany in his youth, but died in Massachusetts, when Sylvia was eight. As she and her father were incredibly close, it was no surprise she was shattered by his death, feeling personally victimized. Because her father was a German, Plath relates herself to a Jew, and considers her father a Nazi during the Holocaust. In “Lady Lazarus”, Plath speaks to the audience directly, and the “you” she references is clearly her father. She says to him: “my skin / Bright as a Nazi lampshade” and “My face a featureless, fine / Jew linen” (“Lady Lazarus” 4, 8). During the Holocaust, Jews were tortured and it is said that their skin was used for lampshades, paper, or anything the German’s needed. Like the Jews, Plath feels like part of her was cut off and taken away, and she is now empty and, in a way, dead. In “Daddy”, the audience is again her father, and she plainly states “I could hardly speak. / I though every German was you” (29). Showing her fear for what is to come, she goes on, “Chuffing me off like a Jew. / A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen” (32). Again she calls herself a Jew, being sent to a concentration camp, to be taken away from her home and what she loves. For Plath, with her father gone, she can relate to this pain; she feels she has been “attacked” and taken by surprise by her loss, leaving what she knows and feeling lonely. Victimized and frightened, Plath conveys her pain as that of the Jews during the Holocaust, creating a depressing tone for both “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”.
Almost all of Sylvia Plath’s poems allude to the concept of death, as depression was a huge struggle for most of her life. She carries the weight of her father’s death on her shoulders, which is one major cause of her depression. In “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”, Plath talks about death in a depressing light, relating it with the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, Jews were perceived by many as lowly or sub human, which, in a depressive episode, Plath would have seen herself. As one form of execution, Jews might have been burned to death, and Plath compares herself to this. “Ash, ash--- / You poke and stir. / Flesh, bone, there is nothing there” (73). She says this in a very matter-of-fact way, as if she is ready and willing to die. Though the Jews would not have been either of these two things, they would have felt like they had no choice or say, similar to what Plath thought; for her, there was no alternative to depression or suicide. “I turn and burn”, she notes again; she has given up (71). In “Daddy”, Plath stumbles “Ich, ich, ich, ich”, as if she is choking (27). Trapped with no way out, Plath mirrors the Jews, who could do nothing to save themselves. Both are without hope, as the depressing events of the Holocaust express.
Plath uses poetry as an outlet, and she is able to show her feelings by the images of the Holocaust she includes. With her father gone, she feels destroyed and hopeless, as the Jews did because of the German Nazis. Ultimately, this leads to her depression throughout her life, and eventually the taking of her own life. In the confessional poetry fashion, her emotions are conveyed throughout the poems, affecting the tone and themes of the poems, making them darker, depressing, and more serious.
Word Count: 767