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  • Daddy As A Confessional Poet

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    Ritankar Roy
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    The poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath uses confessional poetry techniques. It shares deeply personal memories and experiences through first person narration. The speaker describes painful memories with their father, such as being unable to communicate with him and feeling trapped. These intimate details reveal unresolved emotions. The ambiguous relationship between father and speaker allows Plath to examine herself and explore difficult aspects of her identity through the poem, characteristic of confessional poetry. Overall, the poem serves as an emotional catharsis and revelation through its confessional examination of the speaker's unresolved feelings towards their father.

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    Daddy as a Confessional Poet

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    The poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath uses confessional poetry techniques. It shares deeply personal memories and experiences through first person narration. The speaker describes painful memories with their father, such as being unable to communicate with him and feeling trapped. These intimate details reveal unresolved emotions. The ambiguous relationship between father and speaker allows Plath to examine herself and explore difficult aspects of her identity through the poem, characteristic of confessional poetry. Overall, the poem serves as an emotional catharsis and revelation through its confessional examination of the speaker's unresolved feelings towards their father.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    323 views2 pages

    Daddy As A Confessional Poet

    Uploaded by

    Ritankar Roy
    The poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath uses confessional poetry techniques. It shares deeply personal memories and experiences through first person narration. The speaker describes painful memories with their father, such as being unable to communicate with him and feeling trapped. These intimate details reveal unresolved emotions. The ambiguous relationship between father and speaker allows Plath to examine herself and explore difficult aspects of her identity through the poem, characteristic of confessional poetry. Overall, the poem serves as an emotional catharsis and revelation through its confessional examination of the speaker's unresolved feelings towards their father.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Daddy

    by Sylvia Plath

    Discuss Plath's use of the techniques of


    confessional poetry in "Daddy."
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    Cite this page as follows:

    "Discuss Plath's use of the techniques of confessional poetry in "Daddy."" eNotes Editorial, 31 July
    2011, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/discuss-plaths-own-use-techniques-themes-269965.
    Accessed 13 Nov. 2022.

    Expert Answers
    The confessional poetic devices abound in this poem.  The most evident one is the heavily
    personalized nature of the poem. This is accomplished through the first person narration throughout. 
    It is also evident in the personal memories that the speaker experiences and shares with the reader. 
    The "black shoe" which almost brings to mind the idea of living in a shoe box where definitions and
    parameters define one's state of being in the world without any freedom of expression is one such
    memory.  Another one would be the inability to commuicate with the father, brought out in a visceral
    and powerful manner:

    I never could talk to you.

    The tongue stuck in my jaw.

    This is an example of the confessional nature because it takes the experience and brings it forth with
    the kind of physical imagery of "the moment" where conversation ceased.  The confessional nature of
    the tongue lodged in the jaw does not escape the mind of the reader.  One feels the discomfort of
    speech, the experience of pain in that instant.  The closing of needing to "kill" daddy is something also
    confessional, in nature.  I would think that the mere title is also confessional.  The term "Daddy"
    indicates such a strong emotional connection, one where a child looks to the father in the most
    dependent of ways.  The title of the poem is not "father," which is more clinical of a term.  "Daddy"
    reflects that dependence of a child on its paternal figure, something that the speaker of the poem
    opens and closes with in terms of the patricide that needs to result.  These examples of reflective of
    the naked sense of emotion that result in confessional poetry, the type of sensations that seek to
    bring about some form of catharsis and emotional revelation through poetic description.  Certainly,
    the speaker, presumably Plath, seeks this end through the poem.
    I would also say that the confessional poetry aspect is present in the overall purpose of the poem.  At
    its very root, there is an unresolved relationship that exists between father and daughter.  The poem is
    not clear as to what this relationship is, and in this ambiguity, is where the speaker/ Plath exists.  In
    seeking to examine this relationship, Plath seeks to examine herself.  This brings out another element
    of confessional poetry, in being able to use the poem to explore the more unsightly aspects of one's
    sense of being.  This exploration and revelation, one that is done brazenly and openly, is where
    confessional poetry lies and is where Plath's "Daddy" also resides.

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