Line by line explanation of Plath’s poem “Daddy”

 

Stanza/Lines	What It Means
Lines 1-5: You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.	The speaker says after 30 years, she will no longer live trapped inside the memory of her father. Her comparison of him to a shoe evokes the old nursery rhyme about an old woman who lives in a shoe, and the singsong repetition and the word "achoo" sounds similarly childish. The "you" to whom the poem is addressed is the absent father.
Lines 6-10: Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time—— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal	In line 6, the speaker shocks us with the assertion she has already murdered her father—figuratively. A "bag full of God" could mean he's in a body bag or that his body is just a bag. We get an image of how big he is in her eyes via the heavy, cold corpse so large that it spans the US, his toes in the San Francisco Bay...
Lines 11-15: And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du.	...and his head in the Atlantic. She used to pray to "recover" him and she could mean that she wished she could have him back or heal him. This German expression is a sigh of (angry? impatient?) familiarity: "Oh, you." Plath's father was a German immigrant.
Lines 16-20: In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend	The repetition of "wars" gives us the sense that there have been many and of landscapes being repetitively flattened by war.
Lines 21-25: Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw.	This part could mean that the speaker doesn't know precisely where her father came from ("put your foot, your root"), and that she had no rapport with him.
Lines 26-30: It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene	Trying to talk to her father was dangerous and painful, like sticking your tongue in a trap. "Ich" is the German word for "I," and here she is reduced to stammering in fear and confusion. Is she scared or nervous or...?
Lines 31-35: An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.	Trying to speak German makes her feel like she's trapped on a train, headed towards a death camp: We see the speaker's mental and emotional conversion here and how she associates her fear and terror of her father with the struggle of the Jewish people against the Nazis.
Lines 36-40: The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew.	In these lines we join the speaker on that train winding through Europe. The white snow and the clear beer contrast starkly to the dark deeds being inflicted by Nazis in the name of racial purity. The speaker is consciously, deliberately choosing sides.
Lines 41-45: I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——	"Luftwaffe" is the German air force; "gobbledygoo" is another childlike word that conveys her disdain for the German. She calls herself a Jew and her father a Nazi killer. A Panzer-man is one who drives a tank.
Lines 46-50: Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.	His Nazism blocks the sun, it's so huge. Why do women love Fascists? Is it bitter sarcasm or truth? Perhaps she's saying that in relationships, women are dominated by men. In order to love a man you must be masochistic.
Lines 51-55: You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who	Now, she's calling her father a devil. The speaker describes a photo of her father. BTW, Plath's father was a biology professor (see photo below).
Lines 56-60: Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.	He broke her heart. He died when she was 10 and she tried to commit suicide at 20 to get "back, back, back" (like earlier, when she tried to "recover" him). The repetition here emphasizes her futile desperation.
Lines 61-65: But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look	She's so desperate to be with him that even his bones will do. She figuratively tries to join him in his grave (by killing herself), but they (doctors?) save her. So she changes her tactic and makes an effigy of him.
Lines 66-70: And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through. The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through.	She makes a man in her father's image, a sadist, and marries him ("I do, I do"). So now, she no longer needs her father. She cuts off communication with him, the dead, here.
Lines 71-75: If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two—— The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now.	Although she didn't literally kill anyone, the speaker feels as though she has killed both her father and her husband (a parasite who "drank my blood" for 7 years). Perhaps she means simply that they are dead to her now. BTW, Plath was married to Ted Hughes for about 7 years.
Lines 76-80: 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.	She tells her dead father to lie back in his grave. She says she's done with him forever. Maybe she has exorcized or mentally killed him properly this time.