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Briefly explain Sylvia Plath's poems "The Colossus" and "Daddy".
Quick answer:
"The Colossus" and "Daddy" are two poems written by Sylvia Plath. In both poems, Plath deconstructs her father, attempting to understand him and coming to terms with his presence in her life. However, the speaker of "The Colossus" is unable to come to a resolution about her father; she is "married to shadow." The speaker of "Daddy," however, has successfully moved on from her father's presence in her mind.
Both "The Colossus" and "Daddy" show Sylvia Plath attempting to deconstruct her father and remove the power he's held over her, despite being long dead.
"The Colossus" is titled with a reference to a Greek statue, the Colossus of Rhodes, which was destroyed by an earthquake more than 2000 years ago. Like the giant statue, her father is a broken memory to Plath's speaker; he looms large in her head, though she can't truly understand him.
Plath writes, "Thirty years now I have labored / to dredge the silt from
your throat. / I am none the wiser." The speaker hasn't been able to understand
him and hasn't been able to come to terms with him. Despite "scaling little
ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol," she isn't able to fix what's
broken.
The end of the poem doesn't demonstrate freedom from the speaker's father...
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and the overwhelming presence he once had. Rather Plath writes, "My hours are married to shadow. / No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel / in the blank stones of the landing." She is unable to break free from him entirely and accepts this.
"Daddy" is still about Plath's father, but the poem reaches a different conclusion. Instead of trying to piece him back together, the speaker spends the poem preoccupied with his death and with killing the father that looms in her consciousness.
She explains that "I used to pray to recover you," but things have changed now. She doesn't want to be the girl putting the statue of her father back together. Rather, she wants to be free of his memory and the negative aspects of their relationship. She imagines her father as a Nazi and herself as a Jewish person.
In "Daddy," Plath's speaker says, "I have always been scared of you" and says he "bit [her] pretty red heart in two." Still, she insists that her suicide attempt was an effort to get back to him—but she survived, and they "stuck [her] together with glue." She changes after the attempt.
With the last stanza, the speaker breaks free from her preoccupation with understanding and coming to terms with her father, saying:
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
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