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Can someone proofread my short essay real quick :)

heat23

heat23

Elite Member
Due to complications I am delaying the writing on the poem "Daddy."
I know you people are disappointed, but I've got something alot more exciting!!!
A NEW ESSAY!!
Fear not, I have already written it and would just some opinions 🙂

- "Write an essay comparing the depictions of warfare in Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" and Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead"

Just to let you know, I am not happy with what I wrote, but I find it very difficult for me to make it any better 🙁
Presenting......the essay.......

In ?The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner? and ?For the Union Dead?, warfare is depicted as inglorious and dehumanizing. In ?The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner?, the narrator reveals that he involuntarily went from the comfort and warmth of his mother?s womb, to the harsh and cold ?womb? of the airplane in which he is a gunner. After being brutally killed by enemy fire, his mutilated body is then washed out with a hose so the next person can take his place. This vivid imagery shows that war is a machine, where one person can be replaced with the next with total indifference. Human life is devalued to a degree that soldiers are treated merely as puppets as opposed to brave men that are fighting for their country. While ?For the Union Dead? is not nearly as gruesome, it still depicts war as dishonorable and forgettable. Even though a memorial has been built to remember soldiers, it is quickly being forgotten due to commercialism. A parking garage, which is physically endangering the memorial, shows no concern and that the meaning of the monument has been lost. The advertisements exploiting the bombing of Hiroshima shows that even a recent war can be quickly forgotten. These are forcing the monument to ?grow slimmer and younger each year (Lowell p.2371).? As time passes, not only is the memorial physically decaying, but is also fading away from memory as modernization displaces the past. Even though each poem is told from a different perspective, one from the point of view of a gunner in battle, and another from an observer of a Civil War memorial, society?s indifference towards our fallen heroes show war as inhumane and inglorious.


Be as harsh as possible
 
I haven't read the poem but ...

Daddy implies a more personal tone. It also implies that the person writing the poem (or the person saying the word Daddy or both) is significantly younger or at least far less mature. Maybe retarded =p

Father is a word of respect and maturity.
 
I did toy with that idea that Father is more respectful...but i wasnt sure

Plath's father did die when she was 8 years old. And she has alot of hatred towards him for not being there for her. She sees as herself
as a Jew and her father like Hitler. Thats basically what its about...her hatred towards her father
 
Originally posted by: heat23
I did toy with that idea that Father is more respectful...but i wasnt sure

Plath's father did die when she was 8 years old. And she has alot of hatred towards him for not being there for her. She sees as herself
as a Jew and her father like Hitler. Thats basically what its about...her hatred towards her father
Click to expand...

A reference to a Hitler figure as Daddy and not Father has significance. Someone like Hitler would consider his own life to be an accomplishment, but calling him Daddy belittles him and implies that not only is what he's done not an accomplishment, it's not even a little weird, it's not even insane. He's developed so little that he understands nothing about life, and therefore one might refer to him as "Daddy".

Just throwing out ideas. I don't claim to have any clue what I'm talking about.

I'm an engineer> we hate this stuff!

Have fun. I'm going to bed.
 
i'm an engineer too....well almost 🙂
i dont understand why we need this stuff!!

where you english majors at???? 🙂
 
thanks jamautosound..but that doesnt really help too much...ive been googling for hours tryin to find something useful...havent gotten anything really
 
someone please save meeee...i just read it again..i dont know how to 'compare the ideas and emotions expressed in this poem with the form, particularly the rhyme sounds'
 
Originally posted by: heat23
i'm an engineer too....well almost 🙂
i dont understand why we need this stuff!!
where you english majors at???? 🙂
Click to expand...
Think of it as maintenance work on someone else's design, the first step is to understand the existing design before you start making any changes.

Why do you need this stuff? You don't if you plan to stay in your cubicle for the rest of your work life, but having some breadth to your education will help you interact better with non-engineers. You'll also understand the world around you a little better, since current culture is built by reworking the material from the generations before.

For a rather dated example, the Allman Brothers album title "Eat a Peach" is an allusion to the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (TS Elliot). The title makes much more sense if you've read the poem, which itself alludes to Homer's Odyssey.

So does the phrase "between a rock and a hard place." Read the Odyssey and you'll find its influence everywhere.

<-- software geek
 
Heh. Two seconds and I thought I was helping.
rolleye.gif


I just found the poem and read it.😕
rolleye.gif
😕 They want you to interpret this?? wow.

I would say it's called "Daddy" because he died when she was ten. That is all she knew of him, her Daddy.

Comparison -
She contemplates while with her current husband or at a statue she created (not sure).
Her dad died before she had the chance to fulfill her angry wishes. (Bag full of God).
She was living in Cape Cod "Nauset" & "green over blue" when she got older, wishing she could have him back.
She tries to find where he came from "But the name of the town is common" & "where you
Put your foot, your root."
She wishes she could tell him something different "The tongue stuck in my jaw".
She begins to see her "Daddy" figure "I thought every German was you".
She falls for a man who reminds her of her father "Every woman adores a Fascist".
The man abuses her "The boot in the face, the brute" or breaks her heart "Bit my pretty red heart in two".
She tries to commit suicide "At twenty I tried to die" she was saved and creates the statue or marries (again not sure).
"So daddy, I'm finally through" She is done "The voices just can't worm through" She is not haunted with thoughts of her "Daddy" any longer.
"If I've killed one man, I've killed two" She feels like she was too blame for her fathers death when she was ten, and know as she is older, she feels that she had to let him go again.

Well, that's my interpretation. Actually I have no friggin' idea what the %#$@ she was talking about. But this is what I got out of it.🙂

I think the ideas and emotions are focused on the rhyme sounds. Each part of the poem that rhymes has a specific and direct point to get across. Kind of like focal points in a painting.

Heat23, I'm not sure if any of this is going to help you (maybe you'll just chuckle) but you could start with what you think she is talking about, and then find the connection to the rhyme part of it.

FWIW.
 
thanks so much for spending ur time on this....
I dont have a problem with the meaning of the poem...ive read at least 20 essays about this poem... So I am pretty familar with what she is talking about 🙂
Sometimes she rhymes and sometimes she doesnt... But i dont see any correlation between that and the ideas/emotions she is expressing.
 
Originally posted by: heat23
thanks so much for spending ur time on this....
I dont have a problem with the meaning of the poem...ive read at least 20 essays about this poem... So I am pretty familar with what she is talking about 🙂
Sometimes she rhymes and sometimes she doesnt... But i dont see any correlation between that and the ideas/emotions she is expressing.
Click to expand...

Was I close??


<---Ready for defeat.🙁
 
not at all..i think you hit everything on the dot.... the things i read in essays were EXACTLY what you wrote
good job 🙂
 
While I'm advocating The Usefulness of Poetry 🙂 here's another one that has become an integral part of Western culture, popping up as quotes and fragments of quotes in innumerable books, movies, TV shows, etc.:

Ulysses - Lord Alfred Tennyson

especially the last part of the final stanza:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Reading this and other key bits of Western poetry, short stories and novels admits you to a secret club that understands modern culture just a little better than those who only read People or Star Trek novels.

<-- usually too lazy to read books more challenging than David Drake's military SF
 
I've always thought "Daddy" was interesting how it sounds aloud, and how the guttural sounds in nearly every line imply not just raw physicality, but even a violent and sexual physicality. Those same gutturals also hearken to the the Germanic influences present in modern English diction. On a tonal level, these phonetic choices amplify the harshness--almost like the barking of orders--of the ideas present in "Daddy" and on a purely surface level, help give the Nazi reference an audible context from which to spring.

References to Nazism and the father can be seen as more than just references to an oppressive totalitarianism--male dominated society in this case--but also to the narrator's strange role in that society, especially when viewing paternalistic society as one which she had not much experienced with the implication of growing up as a child without a father in the household--a much more influential sphere to very young children than the bigger world at large--until her marriage.

Physicality and violence appear as both externally driven--as though being corrected by the parent--and as an internal regimen of punishment--guilt as quite commonly felt by a child who comes to believe they are responsible for a parent's death.

Plath's alliterative repetitions in "Daddy" reinforce the narrator's addressing of her father's influence on her in abstentia: not just those influences that may be visible (internally rhymed lines suggesting similarity, etc.) but the commonalities between them which cannot be seen (genetic dispositions, mental health, etc.)

Small wonder that much criticism on Plath focuses on biography, which unfortunately nearly always neglects to address her considerable talents as a poet, and not just as a proto- feminist icon.

and yes,
Tallgeese = ex-English major (Creative Writing, no less)
 
TallGeese thanks for that info.... I had a little trouble understanding what ur sayin 🙂

So how come in some places she rhymes lines using an 'oo' sound, but sometimes theres not?
In both cases she is talking about the harsh things. Whats the significance of the 'oo' sound. How about when she uses consecutive 'oo' sounds but then the a line with no rhyme at all (ex: "The tongue stuck in my jaw")?

Also what are your thoughts on why the poem is called "Daddy" instead of "Father". It is because "Father" is a respectful term?

thanks!!
 
I actually had to read this poem this past year for one of my core literature class. I chose intro to poetry for my literature core because I hate reading, and poems are short ... so i didn't have much reading to do 😀

But I didn't really ilke the poem either, or get it too much. I dont remember it that well either. But what I do remember is that we had a little incerpt in our book about her. And I know that she hated her father to death. She despised him. I don't remember why, but she just hated him with the passion. If you find other poems of hers you will see that she hates him. So I can see why she wouldn't call him Father, becuase like you have said its more respectful and she had no respect what soever for her father. Maybe this helps?
 
Originally posted by: heat23
So how come in some places she rhymes lines using an 'oo' sound, but sometimes theres not?
In both cases she is talking about the harsh things. Whats the significance of the 'oo' sound. How about when she uses consecutive 'oo' sounds but then the a line with no rhyme at all (ex: "The tongue stuck in my jaw")?
Click to expand...
I would tend to read the discontinuities as reflective of the discontinuities the speaker seems to feel about her father, although mainly tending toward a chaotic hatred.

When a poem uses a more continuous, consistent pattern of rhyme and/or meter, then that poem seems "harmonious" (keeping in mind that certain meters sound HARSH no matter how consistently that meter is applied). In this case, as the rhyming begins a short burst of continuity, yet then is cut off by a seemingly random, disjointed line, a reader tends to get the impression of the disjointedness in the speaker, as though gaps in her emotions and or thoughts are being filled hurriedly, almost randomly, by her, and it shows.
Also what are your thoughts on why the poem is called "Daddy"
Click to expand...
I think that particular word was chosen to evoke every connotation of derision, hatred, and ridicule one can assign to it.
 
This is just a guess. I don't know much about Sylvia Plath and am not a english or literature major.



Was she married to her first husband for 7 years?

Did she have to deal with guilt or emotion of her father and her first husband. Was it the same type or similar emotion and/or experience?

The end of the poem seems to say that she found a resolution to all the strong emotions that she had towards her father and the complications she has had with dealing with significant others.

Don't know about the rhyme sounds. Many seem to be or sound like "you" Sort of like saying that most of my life was about you (her father or one besides herself) until the end of the poem when she found a resolution and the word "through", though one could argue that she didn't find resolution. Do the rhymes seem child like or overdone or something? Maybe a better word would be simplistic?

I don't know; I like this sort of stuff, but I could be miles away from what is considered correct.

Post what you find out.

Will
 
The word "Daddy" seems to convey some intamacy or form of not being formal. Closeness, personal, emotional. Father might be what you refer to someone elses father, but not your own. A binding.

Good luck

Will
 
I believe she committed suicide on the day her husband wanted to get a divorce. I think i read that somewhere.
It seems like to me that the hatred is for all men in her life, her father and her husband.

in one of the lines she does say "With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo" gobbledygoo is a baby sound i guess, but what is the
significance of that in that sentence?

Also what is the purpose/significance of repeating some words..like "Ich,ich,ich,ich" and "You do not do, you do not do", "An engine, an engine", "And get back, back, back to you"...etc

In this case, as the rhyming begins a short burst of continuity, yet then is cut off by a seemingly random, disjointed line, a reader tends to get the impression of the disjointedness in the speaker, as though gaps in her emotions and or thoughts are being filled hurriedly, almost randomly, by her, and it shows.
Click to expand...

In terms of the ideas and emotions, how does it seem that its "being filled hurriedly"? To me it seems like a well thought out poem.
 
Originally posted by: heat23
In terms of the ideas and emotions, how does it seem that its "being filled hurriedly"? To me it seems like a well thought out poem.
Click to expand...
Not that the poem itself was hurried, but that the speaker has to confront her own gaps of gaping emptiness, not just the loss of her father, but also the hatred of the father (and how hatred tends to erase happier times and memories), and of course the replacement father she has discovered/created as her husband (or ex-) and she is having trouble because it is an impossible task. I see the filling of these gaps, with her disjointed thought patterns, not as madness or insanity, but as a desperate attempt to carve sense out of something she can never truly make complete. The poem is as much, if not more, about the speaker than about "Daddy."

HINT: Be sure as you talk about this poem to keep the speaker of the poem separate from Plath herself, even tho many items in the poem may be autobiographical.
 
HINT: Be sure as you talk about this poem to keep the speaker of the poem separate from Plath herself, even tho many items in the poem may be autobiographical.
Click to expand...

I dont think that relates to the essay topic. This essay just needs to be a very brief and direct on the topic I listed.
I dont know if I am understanding everything your saying. I still think I need alot more information about the rhyme sounds and other things about the form of the poem.

 
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