Ghastly Statue With One Gray Toe Analysis

The speaker 's relationship with her father contradicts the close father-daughter bond common in most family settings. She regards him with hatred and fear as one would a totalitarian dictator, not a loving father whom she adores. There exists, for lack of a better term, immense conflict between this childish, puerile speaker and the father whom governs her every thought. She emphasizes this conflict through the use of numerous allusions, intended to bring about a clear notion of exactly how poorly she was treated by her father. Although there exists varying interpretations of the poems metaphors, the allusions to war torn Germany, vampirism, popular nursery rhymes, as well as Greek architecture are unmistakable and are included by the speaker to parallel her own experiences and conflicts with her father. Throughout the poem, she frequently speculates

The image of her deceased father being carried in a bodybag prompts her to refer to him as “a bag full of God”. “Ghastly statue with one gray toe”. During early childhood, she viewed her father as a God, as a “Marble-heavy” statue in her life. He was a large, imposing, imperial figure who resembled a Greek God, just as those commemorated by marble statues. When he died he was carried out in “a bag full of God”, he was broken into small pieces, no longer imposing, no longer a tangible force in her life. He was reduced to rubble, and removed in a bag. The speaker uses allusion as a tool through which she can express her hatred of her father. She saw him as a truly evil individual, as one does not address a parent as a Hitler figure, or a vampire, lightly. This poem is one written in a mocking tone. The speaker desires to belittle the memory of her father, as it had been the source of much anguish during her life. She wants to remove him from her memory or reduce the effect that his memory has on her life. She uses the aforementioned allusions to emphasize the extensive conflict between her and her monstrous