Traumatic events often challenge an individual’s view of the world as a just and safe place. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Lucille Clifton’s “at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south Carolina, 1989,” are poems that express traumatic experiences. In both poems, Plath and Clifton successfully use poetic techniques that include anaphoras, metaphors and hyperboles to express the emotions of experiencing traumatic events while demonstrating through their literature that suffering different types of trauma whether it be racism or maltreatment results in individuals dealing with a different range of emotions.
In Lucille Clifton’s “at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south Carolina, 1989,” the emotions that arise from the traumatic event…show more content… The speaker describes her father as a “Ghastly statue with one gray toe/ Big as a Frisco seal/ And a head in the freakish Atlantic” (Plath 9-11). The woman is comparing her father to an enormous statue whose toe is found in the Pacific and its head is so huge that it is found all the way across the United States in the Atlantic. The statue is a representation of the lady’s fear. Her father might be dead; however, his presence is always felt by her. Her mind is not free of thoughts of her father no matter where she goes in the world. Additionally, the woman goes on to describe the turbulent relationship she shared with her father. She always felt victimized and she uses the association between the Jews and Germans during the Holocaust to explain her relationship with her father. The speaker says “An engine, an engine” (Plath 31). The engine is a representation of the trains that would carry the Jews to the German concentration camps. The woman essentially explains that her father was heartless and the relationship they shared was cold and unloving. It did not matter that they were blood because the relationship they shared was as if they were enemies. Lastly, the speaker uses a vampire to describe the evil character of her father and her husband. She says “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two--/ The vampire who said he was you”…show more content… In Clifton’s, at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south Carolina, 1989,” the speaker says “your silence drumming/ in my bones,” (3-4). This exaggeration is used to express that the speaker feels unnerved by the fact that she is standing in a place where there is much life present; however, there is silence because no one speaks or recognizes the hard work the slaves did. Also, in Plath’s, “Daddy,” the woman says “And drank my blood for a year,” (73). This exaggeration explains the relationship the woman had with her husband. She felt exhausted and drained throughout the duration of their relationship. In conclusion, both authors use of hyperboles allows for the speaker in Clifton’s poem to express an unnerved feeling and the woman in Plath’s poem to express a weary feeling as a result from the trauma they have
