Point of View

“Daddy” is told from a first-person point of view through the unnamed speaker, “I.” This speaker is presumed to be the daughter in relation to the titular “Daddy,” and her wild psychological machinations furnish the world of the poem.

Because Plath’s speaker calls on incidents in Plath’s biography, including her suicide attempts and her father’s death, it is tempting to equate the first-person speaker with Plath herself. However, the poet behind this poet-persona relies on caricature, hyperbole, and parody to create distance between the two while at the same time relating them with biographical similarities. The result is deliberately provocative. To the extent that Plath works within her own experience in “Daddy,” she does so by creating a character engaged in a struggle to deal with her past, and whose success doing so is debatable.

The poem is in many ways about...