Seamus Heaney and Sylvia Plath are two contemporary poets from very different family backgrounds. Heaney grew up in a large, close-knit family in rural Ireland, and Plath grew up in a broken family with her mother and brother. Her father died shortly after her 8th birthday. The different upbringings of these poets could be the reason why they each represent their fathers very differently in their work. Heaney's poems reflect his pride and admiration for his father's abilities as a farmer, while Plath's poems display raw hatred towards her father. In fact, Plath even goes so far as to use the Holocaust as an extended metaphor, describing her father as an oppressive Nazi. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay However, despite the immediately obvious differences between the two poets' depictions of their fathers, there are subliminal feelings beneath the surface. Despite Heaney's great admiration for his father and his skills as a farmer, Heaney's lack of skills as a farmer led him to break away from his agricultural roots and establish himself as a poet. Meanwhile, Plath's relationship with her deceased father is filled with both love and hate. She may hate her father because his absence from her life caused her to become an emotionally oppressed adult, but she also shows feelings of love and longing for the father she never knew. From Plath's desperation to be with her father, her strong feelings of attachment emerge. In "Follower" and "Digging", Heaney displays an endearing admiration for his father and his skills as a farmer, and even goes so far as to take credit for his father. skill like that of a god. In “Follower,” he watches his father work the plow on horseback, “his shoulders bulging like a full sail taut.” The use of the adjective “globed” evokes the image of Atlas, the all-powerful Titan who carried the heavens on his back. Therefore, by comparing his father to Atlas, Heaney indirectly states that he views his father as a divine being. The way his father controls the horses with "his clicking tongue" also suggests divine attributes. Heaney uses onomatopoeia to describe his father's "clicking tongue", to help the audience visualize his divine father at work. Heaney's zealous idolatry of his father strongly suggests feelings of attachment, but conversely, this metaphor also establishes a separation between Heaney and his father, like the Greek gods who live atop Mount Olympus, looking down on mortals . Heaney's conception of idolatry and the depiction of a father as a distant deity are reflected in Plath's poem "Little Fugue." In the first line of the 8th stanza, Plath states that "the yew [is] my Christ", and assuming that the yew is a symbol representing her father, we can therefore conclude that she is stating that her father is his personal god. “Little Fugue” is an exploration of a young girl's feelings toward her deceased father and the attachment to him born from his untimely death during her childhood. This metaphor highlights Plath's strong attachment to her father. She worships him, she prays for him, she sacrifices and suffers in his very name and all of this behavior is just a choice. In "Daddy", she makes more religious references, stating that she "prayed to get [her father] back because '[he] died before [she] had time.' The verb “pray” signifies Plath’s feelings towards her father. Plath praying for her absent father is not a new idea, as psychologists have noted thatMany children tend to idolize their absent parents. Additionally, the use of the verb "pray" also implies Plath's desperation to be with her father, as Plath remained ambivalent about religion her entire life. With this in mind, her use of the pronoun "Christ" also reinforces the idea that Plath's father is her own personal god that she could never meet face to face, but could only pray and believe. Plath is attached to her father in the same way that people are attached to their own gods. Although gods can be a positive force in a person's life, they can also be repressive. and dominating because to worship a god means to be subject to the will of that god. The omnipresent yew in “Little Fugue” symbolizes Plath’s father, and she presents the tree as a domineering figure, trapping Plath in its dominant shadow. She reveals it in stanzas 6 and 7: “Such a dark funnel, my father! I see your black and leafy voice, like in my childhood. His father is the menacing yew tree, and the adjective “black” reinforces the motif of darkness and death in the poem. The choice of the name "funnel" also implies a feeling of claustrophobia, as it creates an image of a person trapped in a dark and narrow space. Plath remains attached to her father, as he is the subject of her idolatry, but simultaneously she strives to break away from his influence due to his oppressive nature. Likewise, this image of a child overshadowed by his father is also evident in Heaney's "Follower," when he writes of constantly having to "follow [his father's] shadow around the farm." The adjective “large” highlights the idea that fathers are like gods, they seem powerful and imposing. Heaney feels attached to his father, because he wants to emulate him and "grow and plow" just like him, but instead, but all he always did was "follow in his shadow wide around the farm. Unfortunately, he accepts that he will never be like his father, but that he feels like a "nuisance, always tripping, falling, yapping." The action of "yelp" is a lexical choice that suggests how weak and small Heaney must have felt, as this verb is often attributed to small, shrill dogs. This stands in stark contrast to the word "large", which Heaney uses to describe his father's shadow. However, later in the poem the role is reversed and Heaney's father becomes the one "who keeps stumbling behind [him] and does not go away". Heaney's father has now become a nuisance to the poet, and now he wants to break away from his father. However, Heaney cannot escape his father's influence and continues to follow him even into adulthood. Heaney's feelings of attachment faded with age, as these feelings tend to fade as children grow up and begin to form their own identities. In Heaney's mind, he is not his father's great farmer, so he chooses his own path and becomes a poet, no longer following his father's shadow around the farm. The adjective "stumbling", which Heaney previously used to describe his own clumsy mannerisms, he now uses to describe the frail movements of his ill father. Perhaps Heaney remains attached to his father because he must take care of his man out of family obligation, despite his wish to detach himself from him. Plath also plays on this idea of ​​concomitant feelings of attachment and detachment in “Little Fugue.” The poem is an exploration of a young girl's feelings about her deceased father and how his presence in her life has made her weak, but conflictingly, his death and absence have also left her emotionally disabled . Plath writes that she "sees [her father's] voice," instead ofhear it. It is possible that this overlapping of his senses could be attributed to a sort of temporary synesthesia, highlighting his disturbed state of mind. This idea of ​​confused meaning is also present in Plath's reference to Beethoven, the German composer known to be deaf. Plath also describes herself as being "memory lame", probably due to the death of her father. This reinforces the fact that she remains attached to her father and that his death has left her emotions lame and her senses confused. She describes her father's voice as "black and leafy... a yew hedge of orders", mixing images of the symbolic yew tree and the appearance of her father's voice as "black and leafy". leafy'. The adjective “black” gives his father a dark and menacing character, and completes the symbolism of the yew tree, believed to represent death. Additionally, Plath metaphorically describes her father as a butcher "cutting sausages" in a California delicatessen. The verb "prune" is commonly used to describe the action of removing branches from a tree. So, since the yew tree is a symbol representing Plath's father, it implies that his actions were self-destructive, which ultimately led to his death and ultimately Plath's limping state. Even after his death, Plath continues to be haunted by a father whose barbaric ways continue to "color [her] sleep" into adulthood, leading her to remain attached to him despite her desire to break away from his tyrant and destroyer. influence. Heaney experiences the same whirlwind of emotions, mixed feelings of attachment and detachment, as he demonstrates in “Digging”. Heaney describes a son or daughter's desire to become independent from their father, but the obligation makes it difficult to break the family attachment. It is interesting to note that the word "fugue" (as in the title "Little Fugue") has a double definition. connects to Plath's conception of mixed senses. In musical terms, a fugue is a contrapuntal musical composition, which goes against Plath's personal synesthesia. In psychiatric terms, a fugue is a state of temporary amnesia in which a person forgets their entire identity for a period of time. Thus, Plath's account of her own variety of synesthesia and the numbing of her senses is an elaboration of the title of her poem, "Little Fugue." The presence of her father in her life was so detrimental to her state of mind that she lost all sense of her identity, and this absence further crippled her psyche. Heaney explores the idea of ​​identity in "Digging", where he constantly compares his lack of grace as a farmer to his father's prowess and skills, and through these observations he ultimately concludes that he has no “no spade to follow men like them,” and instead he finds himself in poetry. By separating himself from his family and cutting off its “living roots” (as he writes in “Digging”), he forms his own identity, the only way for him to break away from his father. Heaney also breaks ties with his father by stating that he will "dig" with his pen instead of digging with a spade like a farmer. In the seventh stanza of “Digging,” Heaney metaphorically cuts herself off from her traditional “roots,” as Plath does when she confidently repeats that she “doesn't.” Heaney writes of “the cold smell of potato mold.” The potato is a staple food of the Irish people, and the adverb "cold" and the potato's mold suggest that it is rotting and dying. Consequently, Heaney's attempt to break away from his agricultural roots left their crops to rot. The hissing and onomatopoeia of “the sound and snap of soggy peat” reinforce the imagery of rot and decay..