Close Reading Of Sylvia Plath's Daddy

According to Doctor of Social Work Judith Mishne, “Five percent of American children lose a parent through death before they reach the age of 18,” (Wessel quoted in Mishne). What happens to those children? How do they cope with such a tremendous loss at such young ages? Psychology suggests the effects of this kind of loss permeate the child not only for a period of short term grieving, but also for the rest of their lives. American poet Sylvia Plath’s father died when she was eight years old. Subsequently, her later writing contains language and metaphors that are disturbing and puzzling to the reader, but which psychology can easily explain. The diction, imagery, and metaphor Sylvia Plath utilizes in her poem “Daddy” illustrate the common psychological consequences of losing a parent as a child, and bring the readers’ attention to the thousands of children and adolescents in similar predicaments.

The death of a parent can conjure up a myriad of feelings that persist through childhood and often times linger into adulthood. Several reputable

Mishne’s publication references Freud’s theory of the splitting of the ego. This theory helps explain why emotions for children with deceased parents can fluctuate. This is due to the fact that as a child you do not know what to think. They are unsure if the parent is coming back, they dream about their parent’s return, and they cannot fully grasp why it is their parent that is gone. This leads to “a dual and contradictory attitude toward a major reality of their life.” (Mishne 483). Usually these deferring ideals of a dead parent are “not mutually confronted”(Mishne 483). Because the confusion starts at a young age a child will grow up continuing to have ideas that seem contradictory in nature towards the deceased parent. Therefore Plath’s mixed emotions are more of an often seen reaction, rather than puzzling and out of