The journey to self-awareness takes on different channels that can either be quick or delayed. Regardless of the time taken for it to be realized, the steps that individuals take mostly stem from the point of truth and expression. These two actions clearly depict the desire to understand what one holds and the hypocritical nature that is embedded within. Sylvia Plath is no exception in this journey to self-awareness, and she uses a literary channel to show her changes. While these changes are real with a blend of fictional symbolism, the struggles and experiences she details in the poem are an accurate reflection of her personal convictions on different life situations. I believe that Sylvia Plath employs literary genius to detail her confidence in expressing emotions that she has kept hidden for almost all her life, without the fear of subjection or ridicule especiallyy because it represents her true nature and not the mask she was used to having due to lack of courage.
It is imperative to note that all the information shared by Sylvia in the poem is derived from past experiences, es meaning that they are the ideal recipe for realizing total understanding of self. Her deep comprehension of the past gives her a basis for comparison to fully understand the things she did that she views as very queer. There are countless times in the poem where the poet states that she was living in some form of fear. In the first stanza, Sylvia writes that she was “barely daring to breathe or Achoo” when she remembers her father’s position in her life while growing up (Plath, Daddy line 5). What perplexes most is the underlying information that bases her fear of her father. Her father died when she was young,ung a revelation in the second stanza line two that states “you died before I had time.” (Plath, Daddy line 7) She goes further and states that her dad died prematurely because of having a disease that made his feet as “Big as a Frisco seal.” When we go back to the first stanza, she states that the time she lived under the black shoe was 30 years, poor and white. So it means that the fear component stayed with her ever since her short interaction with him,h him meaning that those experiences then had a great deal of impact long after he was gone. This brings out a mixed recipe of unresolved resentment for her father’s persona during the time he was alive and even after. When Sylvia claims that she was unable to breathe or Achoo, it brings a sense of frequent and occasional happenings. The fear of exploring things that sort for her to break free of the enclosure brought about by the fear of her father caused her not to be able to do the slightest of things in life. Breathing is involuntary, and without any conscious effort, a man can be able to do so without end. However, she points out that even that, as she sees now, was difficult when her father was present.
Sylvia admits to having some traces of weakness in realizing the veil that has covered her throughout her years. In one instance, she states that there was a time she prayed to have her father get back to her, meaning that it had escalated from wanting to needing. She first says in the third stanza, third line, that the father figure she had in her mind had stretched far beyond the Atlantic (Plath, Daddy line 13). In the subsequent line, she recalls that it did stretch to the Nauset. She then institutes prayers in the form of bringing back her father, which is symbolic of his influence on her. To he,r having the dominion of her father in her life was normal, al which spells out a weakness in her very nature. So it means that anything that would resemble her father would reincarnate the father in her mind. Another instance in the poem that justifies this very claim is the instance in the 5th stanza,nza line four, where it states “I never could talk to you.” (Plath, Daddy line 24) The poet hintsato a lack of stability in her nature because of having something to say but not exploiting the available avenues to do just that. When looking at it from a critical perspective gauged on the element of self-awareness, the poet tries to show her timid nature when it came to facing the “father figures” in her life as a whole. It also brings a point of realization when she states that she could hardly speak and that she thought that every German was him in the sixth stanza line 3 and 4. In the second line, she repeats the phrase “Ich” four times as if to bring a channeled focus on it. Ich is a German word that means “I.” Repeating the pronoun, I continually indicate a level of self-questioning. So this could mean that the poet was trying to position herself in the light of what she used to believe in the past and her convictions during the time of crafting the poem. In the context of writing the poem, the Germans were the dominating force and used them as a representation to bring out the traits of power and authority. So equating his father to any German showed her father’s all-powerful representation.
After pointing out her weaknesses that originated from the pedestal she had placed her father, she came to the point of realization of the position she indeed occupied in life. Because to her, the subjection to her father as an icon was not apparent to her when she was growing up till the point of her realization. In the 7th stanza, she starts her journey to understanding herself clearly, as the poet details in the first line of the stanza, where she rode on an engine that chaffed her like a Jew (Plath, Daddy line 31). Borrowing understanding fromthe actual context, the Jews in society were under the Germans and were constantly being massacred before and after the world war. So saying that she was being chaffed up like a Jew meant that she was insignificant to some point. A Jew was always subjected to rule by their German counterparts, suggesting that the poet considered herself in the subjection of not the Germans but the father icon she had cultivated in her head. This juncture of realization is coupled with a situation where Sylvia actually thinks that she is Jewish in nature when she states that she has gypsy traits, something common to Jews. This furthers her realization of the position in which she was during the whole period she was subject to fear from her father and his persona. Another weakness that the poet shows is the fact that she could not live without the father model in her life to the point that she had to craft one herself. This she did long after her father had passed on, but his elements stuck with her all the days after that. To illustrate this, Sylvia writes in her poem the thirteenth stanza line four that she created a model of her father (Plath, Daddy line 64). She does this through her husband, with whom they have already said their vows in the second line of the subsequent stanza (Plath, Daddy line 62). She shows a reverence trait for father figures and presages that into other males.
Sylvia had in the second stanza line three leveled her father as a “bag full of God” because of her perception of him at the time (Plath, Daddy line 8). This same representation is also used in the tenth stanza, whereby the poet refutes her earlier claim of being a God but rather says a swastika. The swastika is an Indian symbol used by the Nazi (Black par 2). So Sylvia is hit by the realization that her father was not as great as she previously had thought,t and he was just inflated at different instances. The swastika also provides another meaning whereby it acts as a blindfold that is forged to hide the plain truth through intimidation or hypocrisy. The poet now moves to a more generalized aspect where she claims that these individualwhoat block out the real view tend to be the most attractive ones for the woman,n but does not explain why. The statement points to a deeply rooted happening that she tries to unveil to the public, in pending her ongoing realization. She has already realized that her father was not more than a blinding element and not a God, and now the stereotypical position that women enjoy being in when it comes to the “Fascist.”
The poet recalls her decision to bring back to life the persona of her father through her husband. It also forms a subsection of the realization journey that would later happen in her life. Sylvia details the point where she tried to commit suicide because of trying to reunite with her father in the twelve-stanza line three (Plath, Daddy line 58). This happened twelve years after the father had died. She brings the perception that she was nothing without the father figure in her life, and as a result, makes it miserable in its entirety. When she creates her father’s image in her husband, she feels as if it is the best approach to filling the vacuum in her life. However, the decision turns out to be another mistake because Sylvia writes of her divorce in the 15th stanza. Another reflection that the poet does is in the image of the husband. She characterizes him as having a Meinkampf look, which is borrowed from the Hitler book, My Struggle. This persona also had a love of the rack and the screw, which means that it was not averse to any form of torture. After understanding the decisions she had made when getting into the marriage, she describes the decision to end it as cutting off the black telephones at the root. Black is symbolic all over the poem as it means having a veil that constrains freedom of self-worth. Sylvia claims that the voices that originated from the black telephone, which was herfather’s, could not get to her now that she had already cut the ties that once linked him to her.
The fifteenth stanza culminates the whole realization journey of the position she had allowed herself to occupy. Comparatively,y the subjection position she was at was not a result of her own doing but rather the emotional cleft left by her father’s demise. Due to her young age, she was not able to get over the position of a man in her life as portrayed by her father. When she decided to discard the male subjectivity in her life, it meant that she had to do away with her husband because he represented two people. That is when she says that if she has killed one man (husband), then she has actually killed two (both her husband and father). And drank my blood for a year is a statement that sums up her experiences in marriage,ge which were not pleasant. So after having “killed” the two individuals in her life that sought to constrict her persona, she was able to let go of the resentment for her father. She further expresses the general feeling of her father to even the villagers whose relationships are not well detailed in the poem. The final exclamation shows relief by the poet who is now finally able to experience freedom from total self-awareness.
In the poem, Morning Song by Sylvia Plath, the element of self-awareness is also quite apparent in the manner in which she ushers her newborn baby into the world. “ In a drafty museum, your nakedness” (7) is a connotation that brings a new understanding of childbirth as per the poem. To Sylvia, the newborn child was a statue because of the uniqueness it portrayed as well as the unusual emotions it ddispelled It would seem normal for a mother to feel bonded to the child, but it was not the case for he,r as she felt alienated from it. She was not aware that a human, more somotherthe,r could feel the way she did towards the being they brought to life. However, it was a step that she describes as intriguing because of the constant scrutiny she did on the baby’s behavior. Despite the nonhuman qualities of thenewbornn baby as she spells out as “Took its place among the elements” (4), Sylvia somehow develops the desire to listen to the child. Even as the little one develops sounds that she terms as notes, Sylvia shows a sense of attachment, something that in the start seemed not plausible. In all these happenings that Sylvia details in her poem, the theme traversing through is the element of honesty that is seen in the way sheexpressesd her feelings. She did not shy away from saying what she really felt just because society expects her to feel otherwise. In a bold sense of surrealism, Sylvia shows her honest persona in the poem, as is the case with her other piece Daddy.
Works Cited
Black, John. "The symbol of the swastika and its12,000-year-oldd history." 6 February 2014. Ancient Origins..
Plath, Sylvia. "Daddy." New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1981.
"Morning Song." New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1966.
