sir jesse thomas hoskins

“More Than a Lightning Stroke”: Reflections of Daddy
“Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through”(“Daddy 80). It is clear through her poems that Sylvia Plath has an extreme internal conflict about her father and his passing. Her father is always represented as an Omni-powerful entity that fills her with resentment. In “Daddy”, she expresses this resentment with anger, whilst also being in extreme fear of him. This is in stark comparison with her feelings of regret of loss in “The Colossus”. Plath’s use of allusions and imagery give an angry or fearful tone in “Daddy”, but present a regretful tone in “The Colossus” to represent her internal conflict about her father and show its growth from loss to resolution.
In both poems it is shown that Plath had insecurities about her father and his memory, that hold her back from looking to the future. To show this insecurity, she uses imagery and allusions. Specifically, in “Daddy” Nazi allusions are made. This is used to show her insuperiority to her father and her fear of him, “I have always been scared of you, with your Luftwaffe” (“Daddy” 41-42). Though her use of imagery is completely different in “The Colossus”, she still shows her insuperiority to him, “it would take more than a lightning-stroke to create such a ruin” (“The Colossus” 22-23). Though her insuperiority isn’t shown through fear, her base feelings are still the same, and through these feelings she establishes her overall emotions toward her father, which is loneliness from his death. Because her father died when she was very young, she has not had the strong support that she needed for most of her life, this is clearly shown in “Daddy” despite the fear she has for him, “and get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do” (“Daddy” 59-60). It is quite clear that she is held back by her father’s death and memory. This is clear also in “The Colossus”, “I shall never get you put together entirely/ my hours are married to shadow” (“The Colossus” 1, 30). She has had to put her life on hold to deal with these problems set by her father. While this conflict continues, Sylvia cannot focus on the future.
Plath chooses to deal with her father issue in two ways; through anger and regret. In “Daddy” she uses violent and hateful imagery to show her extreme fear of her father and her way of dealing with the fear through anger, “there’s a stake in you fat black heart and the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you” (“Daddy” 76-78). At the end she finally deals with her father by letting the villagers torture and kill him. The villagers killing him symbolize her starting to get rid of her fears and insecurities about her father. She then has a revelation and finally frees herself from her father’s hold, “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (“Daddy” 80). From her anger she is able to throw herself free from her father and start to move on. This is also shown in “The Colossus”, but in a different method. Instead of being in fear, then using anger to free herself, she feels loneliness, “I crawl like an ant in mourning” (“The Colossus” 12). Through “The Colossus” she attempts to put the colossus back together but, “I shall never get you put back together entirely” (“The Colossus” 1) which shows that she has regrets about never being able to connect with or resolve her problems with her father. Through this regret, she is able to slightly resolve herself by letting go of her father’s memory, “no longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel” (“The Colossus” 29). Since she no longer attempts to fix him, it symbolizes her stopping trying to fix her problems with her father and start moving on in her life. So through her different forms of expression, she is able to let go of her insecurities.
In her poems, “The Colossus” and “Daddy” Plath expresses her insecurities and then uses anger and regret to let go of these problems. This shows the readers that Plath’s internal conflicts are a large source of inspiration for her. This revelation to the reader lets them understand Plath’s poems and Plath’s themes, which will make them wonder, what internal conflicts are plaguing her in this work? Through this, the reader is forced to question their own problems and insecurities, finding their own means to deal with and let go of them.

Word Count: 722