Plath’s Daddy Essay: Clusters of Images -- Plath Daddy Essays

Clusters of Images in Daddy Imagery in literature provides the writer with an instrument for establishing a viewpoint or perspective. The author can use an unlimited amount of symbols, similes, and metaphors that produce an atmosphere for the reader to visualize the story effectively. In the poem "Daddy," written by Sylvia Plath, the author utilizes numerous clusters of images to represent the fury and wrath of a crazed woman haunted by her father's frightening and domineering disposition. Plath uses this imagery to depict the emotional chaos controlling fathers inflict on their offspring. One of the most prominent groups of images Plath uses to show the turmoil and fear the narrator feels for her father is comparing him with Nazi Germany, the devil's hoofs, and a vampire. Evil, mean-spirited images flourish within "Daddy." The speaker characterizes her father as a Nazi. Phrases like, "With your Luftwaffe" (l. 42), "your neat moustache and your Aryan eye" (l. 43), and "Panzer-man, panzer-man" (l. 45) fill the poem with images of Deuts...