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Comparing Daddy By Sylvia Plath And Nazi Germany

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“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath and Nazi Germany In the poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, there are countless themes all associated with the vexation between father and daughter. Death, confinement, and control are among the various themes, all conveying an aberrant message. The title of the poem is misleading; emanating affection and warmth. Delving into the poem, the reader sees past the disguise that Plath has made, discerning her father through her eyes. Her father is compared to Hitler, and ultimately, to the devil himself. Plath utilizes the ideals and events of Nazi Germany to compare, expose, and describe the dysfunctional relationship between the speaker and her father. First and foremost, Plath represents a speaker who compares the association …show more content…

In the eighth stanza, the allusion begins “The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna / Are not very pure or true. / With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck / And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack / I may be a bit of a Jew” (36-40). Allusion is effectively used to refer back to the history of World War two. The Beer Hall Putsch, referencing the ‘beer of Vienna’, alludes to Hitler’s failed attempt to seize power there. Tyrol, another state in Austria, is also associated with Nazi Germany in this case. Benito Mussolini, an Italian leader, took over in Tyrol and persuaded many Italians to move into the state. Mussolini then banned the use of the native German language, forcing natives to embrace the Italian culture or emigrate to Germany. The selective word choices in this stanza have connotative meanings as well. The use of ‘snows’ and ‘clear’ to describe these locations suggest innocence yet conceal the deceit happening within these locations. The mention of a gypsy ancestress can connect to Nazi Germany, as gypsies were among the groups that were persecuted because they were considered impure. The taroc pack refers to the gypsy ancestry, and the repetition ties the lines together in order to keep the poem’s rhythm. The last line of the stanza could be interpreted as someone along their family lineage was a jew. The daughter could also be saying that she is a jew

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For the metaphor the most important was “Ahead of you lies a long road paved with suffering”(Wiesel,41). One of the guards used this metaphor to tell the prisoners how truly awful their time in camp will be, infinite and very painful. Lastly, the most significant hyperbole was “We went off to work as usual, our bodies frozen”(Wiesel,78). Of course, there bodies weren’t actually frozen, but they might as well be. The conditions in the camp were so poor that they had little to no ways to keep themselves warm in the winter, which is portrayed in this hyperbole.

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Throughout Night, Elie Wiesel demonstrates the indifference and lack of empathy created by extreme conditions. Wiesel develops this theme as early as in chapter two when Elie is packed into the back of a cattle car and is being transported to Auschwitz. With everyone's nerves at their breaking point, when Mrs. Schächter began having a mental breakdown, they resorted to violence, and “when they actually struck her, people shouted their approval”(26). The stress and distress caused by being trapped in the cattle car brought a tight knit, religious community to beating an older woman. This loss of empathy even impacts familial bonds, this is illustrated vividly during the death march, Rabbi Elihau’s son abandoned him.

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787 Words | 4 Pages

For the metaphor the most important was “Ahead of you lies a long road paved with suffering”(Wiesel,41). One of the guards used this metaphor to tell the prisoners how truly awful their time in camp will be, infinite and very painful. Lastly, the most significant hyperbole was “We went off to work as usual, our bodies frozen”(Wiesel,78). Of course, there bodies weren’t actually frozen, but they might as well be. The conditions in the camp were so poor that they had little to no ways to keep themselves warm in the winter, which is portrayed in this hyperbole.

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317 Words | 2 Pages

The bond between a father and a son is perhaps a thing of beauty. It is sometimes what bonds them together to survive horrible occasions, such as the Holocaust that Elie Wiesel and his father went through. Throughout the march to the Birkenau concentration camps, some sons and fathers took advantage of their father's’ old age and used it to steal or betray them. This displays how dehumanization plays a role in breaking apart a family bond that was instilled in their hearts on their first days of humanity.

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783 Words | 4 Pages

Andreas speaks about the songs as something that you sing to yourself without noticing or even wanting to, he states that these songs are “drilled into them to kill their thoughts” (59). The lyrics in these songs connect to Germany ideology and propaganda, the lyrics of these songs talk about the future expansion of German dominance worldwide (62). Andreas remembers previous encounters in other locations regarding the welfare of the Jewish and the mentally ill, which went against the Nazi belief of a national community (38,42). They have either been killed or put into a concentration camp but even when being on the German army, feels remorse towards the Jewish people even when he knows that the rest of the people in the train with him would arrest and or kill him if they knew his feelings towards them due to the thinking that the Jewish people, during World War 1 were one of the reasons that the Germans lost the

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670 Words | 3 Pages

In the Night, Wiesel was talking about their lives in the camps. Their lives were full of darkness. For instance, “The days were like nights, and the nights left the dregs of their darkness in our soul. ”(Night 67). This quote made the people feel sad .

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656 Words | 3 Pages

It states in the beginning, “First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out” and ends with, “Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me” (Lines 1,2,13-15 Niemoller). The poem details the Nazis' persecution of various groups, with the speaker only speaking out when they finally come for him. The poem highlights the importance of standing up for others, as eventually, it might escalate to where everyone is at risk. In human nature, it is known that people follow what everyone else is doing, though it can be changed.

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764 Words | 4 Pages

The Nazis abuse his father and, though he did not react, he felt the desire to “sink my nails into the criminal’s flesh” (Wiesel 37) to defend his father. But shortly before his father died, he began to care less and less about himself and his father. And when his father passed away, he no longer could imagine a reason to go on

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Some may argue that it just symbolizes dark and misfortune, but it goes a lot deeper than just depressing words. It represents what the Holocaust stood for, and what Jews experienced while in the concentration

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Elie Wiesel's memoir Night relates his experiences as a Jewish boy during the Holocaust. The memoir focuses on Elie's relationship with his father and how it impacts him throughout the events. Elie's connection with his father develops with time, with both positive and negative effects for him. In Elie Wiesel's memoir “Night” it can be argued that Elie and his father have an easy relationship. They form a close bond and encourage one another as they go through difficult moments in the camp.

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669 Words | 3 Pages

The theme he develops around this topic is that Father-Son relationships can change and that they are important. Before Wiesel and his father were caught up in the Holocaust, they never really talked to each other, however, once they realized how bad of a situation they were in, they both knew they only had each other, forcing them to rely on each other which allowed them to better understand each other. Wisiel shows that a Father-Son relationship is ever-changing, this is seen throughout Night, but readers can see the change on p.30 when Wiesel and his father are getting ready to be sorted to the right(death) or left(camp). “My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think of was not to lose him.”

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701 Words | 3 Pages

More than 12,000 children under the age of 15 passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp, also known by its German name of Theresienstadt, between the years 1942 and 1944. Out of all the children, more than 90% lost their lives during the time of the Holocaust. Additionally, throughout this time, children would write poetry describing how they would like to be free and their faith in believing they would one day be free again and see the light of the sun. They would also write about the dreadful experiences they suffered through. To add on, the poet’s word choice helps to develop the narrator’s point of view.

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1322 Words | 6 Pages

The poem ultimately reminds us all that we all continue to have a voice, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or sexual preference and regardless of the inequality we have faced trough out our history; as long as the world keeps fighting minority groups, we must fight back, come together in solidarity and stand up for the change we have been waiting for, for so long; despite our differences. Going back in time to the early 1940’s, where Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Germany murdered eleven-million people, a vast majority of them which were Jews, but those eleven-million also included gays, priest, gypsies, disabled people, anarchist, Poles, communist, trade unionist, Jehovah’s witness, anarchists, Slavic’s, and resistance fighters. Many of which were minorities and did not fit into Hitler’s ‘believes’; similar to what we find ourselves facing about seventy-five years later. Donovan mentions in her poem, “I didn’t know

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303 Words | 2 Pages

The poem aims to glorify soldiers and certain aspects of war, it goes on to prove that in reality there really isn 't good vs bad on the battlefield, it 's just a man who "sees his children smile at him, he hears the bugle call, And only death can stop him now—he 's fighting for them all.", and this is our hidden meaning.

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709 Words | 3 Pages

Hitler also had many statues of himself, or figures that represented him and his rule. Also, in line 6 Plath mentions her father as “daddy” emphasizing on the childlike sounds. Plath does this to remind the reader that she is writing about her relationship wither father from a very young age. Next, imagery is shown again in lines 32-33 “chuffing me off like a Jew./A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.”

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