Daddy Good Country People and Shiloh Essay -- essays papers

Daddy Good Country People and Shiloh Sylvia Plath’s â€Å"Daddy†, Flannary O’Connor’s â€Å"Good Country People†, and Bobbie Ann Mason’s â€Å"Shiloh† all have something in common. In each, the relationship between a parent and child is discussed. It is left up to the reader to decide the nature of the relationship. Although what stands out in Sylvia Plath’s poem "Daddy" is the Nazi imagery, it is interesting to note that the father is not called a Nazi in the first half of the poem. In the first stanza he is a "black shoe / In which [she has] lived like a foot" (2-3) which is certainly a stifling image but not yet a clear reference to the father's evil nature. Next he is "Marble heavy, a bag full of God" and a "Ghastly statue" (8-9), images which reveal the daughter's struggle to cope with his death but do not reflect any bad intent on the part of the father. From line 15 to the midway point of "Daddy," Plath begins to use Nazi imagery, but she still does not attack the father. Instead, the poem focuses on the daughter's frustrating attempt to connect with her dead father through his native language, German. In the second half of "Daddy," it is difficult at first to pinpoint where Plath starts to include thoughts of her husband. The speaker of the poem doesn’t make specific reference of a marriage until line 67, there is evidence before that which suggests that the speaker had found a replacement for her father. The language of lines 48 to 50, "Every woman adores a Fascist, / The boot in the face, the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you," connotes an abusive relationship between husband and wife, not parent and child. Likewise, the phrase "the black man who / Bit my pretty red heart in two" (55-56) is much more approp... ...d Norma Jean for the death of her baby, claiming that Norma Jean neglected the child. For years Mabel was after Leroy and Norma Jean to take a trip to Shiloh, the site of a Civil War battle that ended tragically. This battle was the first indication of how horrible the war would be, just as Norma Jean began to realized what her life would be like with Leroy home all of the time. Somewhere along the trip Norma Jean decided to end the marriage. Mabel pushed Norma Jean into marriage when Leroy got her pregnant, Mabel criticized her all of the time, Mabel seemed to always take Leroy’s side when discussing Norma Jean, and Mabel pushed for the trip to Shiloh. Norma Jean’s feelings of anger most likely stem from her mother’s overbearing qualities. Bibliography: Sylvia Plath’s â€Å"Daddy† Flannary O’Connor’s â€Å"Good Country People† Bobbie Ann Mason’s â€Å"Shiloh†