Josh Kim

“Herr God, Herr Lucifer” : Holocaust Imagery used by Sylvia Plath

“Every woman adores a Fascist,” (“Daddy” 48). Sylvia Plath references the Holocaust several times throughout her two poems, “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”. Considering how horrific and tragic the Holocaust was, and the fact that Sylvia Plath was a confessional poet; the reader can assume that her life was full of sorrowful experiences. In “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy” Plath uses images of the Holocaust to convey her relationships with the most prominent men in her life and the emotional pain she was going through.

The poem “Daddy” is widely known as one of the best examples of confessional poetry; it accurately portrays Plath’s father and the similarities between the relationships Plath had with her father and her ex-husband. “I used to pray to recover you.” (“Daddy” 14). This quote obviously is directed towards Plath’s father, Otto Plath. Sylvia had had an extremely close relationship with Otto and she was devastated when he died in 1940 when she was 8. After his death, Sylvia is resentful and bitter that her father had not done anything to prevent his death. “I was ten when they buried you./ At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back, back to you.” (“Daddy” 57-59). This quote clearly portrays how desperate Plath was for her father and how much she thought she needed him. This early tragedy ultimately led to her depression and her first suicide attempts. “The first time it happened I was ten./ It was an accident./ The second time I meant/ To last it out and not come back at all.” (“Lady Lazarus” 34-38) Plath is not only in a suicidal state after Otto’s death but she is left vulnerable to other relationships; including her relationship with Ted Hughes. In Daddy “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two---/ The vampire who said he was you/ And drank my blood for a year” Plath uses these lines to describe how she had replaced the gap left by her father’s death with her relationship with Hughes. “And then I knew what to do./ I made a model of you,/ A man in black with a Meinkampf look/… And I said I do, I do.” (Daddy 63-68). However, their relationship was disastrous and ended when Hughes’ was discovered to have an affair. Both Plath’s relationship with Otto and her relationship with Hughes ended sadly, and they left her full of sorrow, pain, and emotional turmoil.

Sylvia Plath also uses images of the Holocaust to depict the severe emotional pain that she was going through at the time that she wrote the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”. In “Lady Lazarus” “Dying/ Is an art, like everything else,/ I do it exceptionally well./ I do it so it feels like hell./ I do it so it feels real.” ( 43-48). This quote clearly shows how suicidal Plath was at this point and how much inner turmoil she was going through. The fact that she compares herself to a Jew in the Holocaust also shows the reader the extant to which she is suffering emotionally. “A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen./ I began to talk like a Jew./ I think I maybe well be a Jew.” (“Daddy” 31-35). She sees herself as similar to a Jew and the suffering that they went through. Her pain and emotional turmoil correlates with the failed relationships that she went through with Ted Hughes and her father Otto Plath. Her suffering has three different stages as it progresses from resentment: “Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time---“ (“Daddy” (6-7) to desperation: “The second time I meant/ To last it out and not come back at all./ I rocked shut” (“Lady Lazarus” 37-39) to finally, suicide: “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” (“Daddy” 80).

Sylvia Plath conveys her suffering and pain from emotional turmoil through the images of the Holocaust in her two poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”. She also uses these images to show the relationships that led to her suffering. She shows her hate, resentment, and sadness towards her father and ex-husband through the images of Nazis from the view point from a Jew. And she shows her pain through the images of the pain and suffering that the Jews went through.