"Daddy" & "Hawk Roosting" Jacks

Perspective

Plath utilises the first-person perspective throughout the dramatic monologue, through which her speaker contemplates overlapping micro and macrocosms of oppression. 

Structure & Irony

The final line of the poem is seemingly ironic in the sense that it adopts an assertive voice and yet seems to be convincing themselves that they are “through”, while the reader remains unconvinced as each stanza has a uniform 5 lines and the poem ends cyclically.

Gothic Symbolism

Plath indulges in her typical Gothic colour palette of black and white in her symbolism of the body; Plath’s oppressor is ‘black’ – perhaps rotten – while her heart is ‘red’ and thus full of life. This arguably signifies her defiance in spite of her emotional captivity. 

Plath also adorns the Gothic symbol of the vampire, which typically are representative in Gothic literature as a double-figure which is almost-human and yet almost-monstrous; a liminal state by which she categorises her father & husband in a Freudian manner. Perhaps this explore the liminal state of her emotions towards the two, at this point in the poem.

Cultural Allusions

Plath’s speaker in this poem simultaneously idealises and demonises the ‘Daddy’ figure, comparing him to God and then a Swastika. She conflates her [German] father with Nazism as a shocking metaphor for her feelings of oppression surrounding the concepts.

Plath’s speaker also contemplates Germanic imagery, perhaps symbolic of her heritage, which she ultimately refutes and contests ‘I think I may well be a Jew’.

Ariel (1965)

• Dramatic monologue

• Uniform quintets

• Cyclical ending

• Autobiographical details — eg Sylvia did attempt suicide at 20

• Red colour symbolism

• Black colour symbolism

• Gothic symbolism of the vampire & its exploration of human [sexual] maladies

• Confessionalism

• In August (1953) at the age of 20, Sylvia attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills; however was hospitalised and received electro-shock therapy

• Sylvia’s Letters Home, published by Hughes and Plath’s mother in 1975, revealed intimate tensions in her marriage with Hughes

• Plath’s father passed away in 1940

"Plath was a symbolic artist persistently misread as a confessional one." 

“A raving avenger of womanhood and innocence.”

Perspective

Hughes uses the first-person perspective in the hawk’s dramatic monologue, which is used to present an idealised depiction of oppression through the fascist mindset.

Structure & Irony

Each stanza contains exactly 4 lines, which perhaps reflects the hierarchical control with which the hawk reigns over the woods. However, the last line is seemingly ironic in the sense that the hawk ends the poem with an assertive statement that things will remain as they are, although the reader seems unconvinced of this; perhaps the only subtle criticism to be found within the text.

Violent Symbolism

Repetition syntactically draws attention to the features of the hawk used to kill: ‘hooked head and hooked feet’.

The oxymoronic statement ‘my manners are tearing off heads’ uses irony to depict the hawk’s indifference towards murder. Moreover, the verb phrase ‘tearing off heads’ is not a natural way of killing for purposes such as consumption, which highlights the cruelty of the hawk. 

Cultural Allusions

Hughes uses the religious allusion of ‘Creation’ through polyptoton to represent the hawk’s hubris in the quotations ‘It took the whole of Creation to produce my foot’ and ‘now I hold Creation in my foot.’

Lupercal (1960)

• Dramatic monologue

• Quatrains

• Strict structure

• Motif of violence

• Eyes are typically an indication of authoritarianism in Hughes’ work — e.g. Pike — however the hawk closes its eyes here. This may be foreshadowing its’ downfall due to hubris

• Romantic in that it is non-experimental & uses pastoral imagery as a vehicle

• Reaction to the Movement movement — taboos e.g. explicit violence

• Hughes’ father fought in WWII

• Hughes served in the RAF before attending Cambridge

• Hughes grew up in rural Yorkshire and hunted animals in his youth, influenced by his older brother’s 

  interests

Hughes “was not venerating the fascist mind-set – he was exposing it, and exploring its traces in ourselves”.

• Hughes adopts the perspective of an oppressor while Plath adopts that of the oppressed

• Some interpret the hawk as a metaphor for Nazism, as the eagle was a symbol used by the party, and Hughes has alluded to such notions

• Plath explicitly refutes the fascist mindset

• Both poems directly confront controversial topics — a reaction against the Movement movement