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Caleb Carter
Professor Murphy
English 1102-02
22 November 2010
Daddy Issues: The Interpretation of
the Father-Dominated Family in Sylvia Plath’s
“The Colossus” and Sharon Olds’ “Saturn”
Throughout traditional American society, the
father has almost always been seen as the head of the
household. Only in more recent decades have more
varied family structures become common. The lives of
Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds are both reflective of the
father-dominated family, and they represent this
notion in their poetry. In “The Colossus” Plath writes
about her internal struggle with her father’s death. In
life, Plath’s father was rarely involved in the lives of
his children. This longing for the unrequited love of
her father resulted in a personal quest to build the
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relationship they never had, represented in the poem
by the protagonist’s efforts to rebuild the fallen
Colossus of Rhodes. In “Saturn” Olds deals with her
own issues with her father—mirroring his alcoholism
and its effect on his family to the mythical tale of the
Roman god Saturn devouring his sons. Both poems
make allusions to mythical deities as a metaphor for
the dominance of a father over the family. The
protagonist’s obsession in “The Colossus” with
restoring the great fallen statue of Helios and Olds’
comparison of alcoholism to the myth of Saturn both
represent that a father’s actions—in life and in death—
have a lasting psychological effect on his children.
Sylvia Plath’s struggle with overcoming the loss
of her father is one of the dominant themes in “The
Colossus.” In the poem the protagonist attempts to
restore the fallen Colossus of Rhodes. The Colossus
was an over 100 ft. bronze statue depicting the Greek
god Helios, which is among the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World. It stood overlooking the harbor of the
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city of Rhodes, Greece until it fell during an
earthquake in 225 BC. Plath uses this godly effigy as a
metaphor for the image she has of her father. Plath’s
father died when she was eight years old—a time
when most children are still dominated completely by
their parents, instilling in them a view of their parents
as gods. When Plath lost her father during this period,
his towering image froze solid and shattered
simultaneously, his “fluted bones and acanthine hair”
(line 20) lying in ruin in her mind. Plath uses an
image of the Roman Forum to connect those of her
dead father and the Colossus: “O father, all by
yourself / You are pithy and historical as the Roman
Forum” (17-18). The Roman Forum is no longer a
functional structure, but its ruins still exist, just like
the ruins of the Colossus and Plath’s vague memory of
her father. Plath, through the poem’s protagonist, is
trying to restore the shattered Colossus of her father,
“dredg[ing] the silt from [his] throat” (9) in order to
understand the god she never knew. Her protagonist’s
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rebuilding of the Colossus was the closest Plath could
ever come to obtaining the relationship with her father
that had eluded her during his life.
This interpretation of the Colossus as being not
only a metaphor for Plath’s father but also a
hypothetical replacement for him is understandable
considering the psychological aspects of the fatherdaughter relationship. A girl’s relationship with her
father is an integral part of her childhood
development. According to Shari Jonas, “the desire
[for girls] to be loved by [their] dads is a deep,
emotional need” (“Effects”). Jonas goes on to explain
that if a girl is denied a relationship with her father,
she will typically try to fill the role of that father
figure, usually through her romantic relationships.
Plath replaces her father, not with a man, but with the
Colossus. Jonas states that “never bonding with your
father may [make you] feel as if there is a void in your
life which you have been trying to fill ever since”
(“Effects”). The Colossus is Plath’s coping mechanism,
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her way of filling the void left by her father. The
Colossus is an “oracle, / Mouthpiece of the dead” (6-7)
through which her father can speak to her, fulfilling
the dominant role he resisted in life.
Sharon Olds’ poem “Saturn” also maintains the
theme of the ill effects of the father-dominated family.
Unlike “The Colossus,” wherein Plath explores the
negative effects of a father’s distance, Olds reveals
how the bond between a parent and child can cause
that child to be plagued by the demons of the father. In
“Saturn” Olds uses her experience with an alcoholic
father to craft a critique of the male role in society and
how, through this patriarchal structure, a father’s
alcoholism can have a debilitating affect on the family,
specifically in regard to the son he is trying to mold.
Like Plath, Olds’ poem also makes reference to GrecoRoman myth. “Saturn” begins with a literal depiction
of the father passed-out drunk: “He lay on the couch
night after night, / mouth open, . . . / big hand / fallen
away from the glass” (lines 1-7). The poem then shifts
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to a fantasized portrayal of the father devouring his
son. The poem’s title and the father’s actions allude to
the Roman myth of the colossus, Saturn, devouring his
sons. This act of devouring is a metaphor for the
terrible effects of alcoholism, causing the lives of the
family members to “slowly / [disappear] down the
hole of [the father’s] life” (10-11). The fact that the
sons are being devoured in the myth is also a
metaphor for the damaging methods which father’s
use to instill the concept of the father-dominated
family in their sons. The poem depicts the father
biting off his son’s arm “and suck[ing] at the wound /
as one sucks at the sockets of a lobster” (13-14). The
father is devouring his son’s source of life, emotionally
damaging and weakening him in order to “ show [him]
what a man could do—show his son / what a man’s
life was” (30-31). In doing this, the father is teaching
his son a man’s role in society: that a man is in control
of his family. While Saturn devoured his sons
physically in order to maintain his power over the
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world, the father, through his alcoholism, devoured
his son emotionally in order to maintain his power
over the family, and by example passed these despotic
methods to his son.
Fathers play a tremendous role in the lives of
their sons. One of his main duties is to teach his son
everything he needs to know about being a man.
Attempting to learn these lessons in a household
traumatized by alcoholism can have a devastating
effect: “Comparisons between alcoholic and normal
families have revealed that families of alcoholics are
more troubled and dysfunctional. Their interactions
are characterized by higher levels of negativity,
conflict, and competitiveness, decreased levels of
cohesion and expressiveness, and deficits in problemsolving capabilities” (Rotunda). When the teacher of
these lessons is the alcoholic, it is even worse because
alcoholic families have “unhealthy parent-to-child
communications” (Rotunda). The father in “Saturn”
attempted to impart life lessons onto his son, but the
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father’s ideas about “what a man’s life was” (31)
became warped by alcohol and abuse. Unless another
father figure comes into the son’s life, he will likely
retain these skewed ideas of masculinity into
adulthood, potentially plaguing his own fatherdominated family with alcoholism and abuse.
Both poems reflect the effects of being raised
within the father-dominated family structure, using
mythical deities as a metaphor for the father’s
overwhelming impact on his family members’ lives.
In “The Colossus” Plath channels her resentment over
her father’s death to show the effect of the fatherdaughter relationship on a woman’s adult life. Her
emotionally neglectful father denied her a
relationship, which is shown to be integral to a girl’s
development. When her father dies at Plath’s young
age, all hope of achieving this relationship was lost,
leaving an emptiness and instilling in her a futile
desire to posthumously gain her father’s unrequited
love. The restoration of the Colossus by the poem’s
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protagonist represents her longing to do the same with
her father—to bring him back to life. In turn, the
Colossus becomes an oracle through which her father
can manifest himself and fulfill his role as father
figure. Through the poem’s protagonist, the Colossus
bestows upon Plath a fatherly protection: “Nights,
I squat in the cornucopia / of your left ear, out of the
wind” (24-25). Just as the Colossus shields the poem’s
protagonist from the wind, it also shields Plath from
the pain of her father’s loss, allowing her to cope.
“Saturn” also deals with the loss of a father: not to
death, but to the ravages of alcoholism. Old calls upon
her past experience to tell the story of an alcoholic
father who becomes a total slave to his addiction. His
alcoholism controlled him to the point that even “as
he lay / on his back, snoring” (9-10), his drinking
continued to tear his family apart. Olds uses the
metaphor of Saturn devouring his sons to represent
the particularly devastating effect of alcoholism on the
father-son relationship. The alcoholism hinders the
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father’s ability to perform his duty of teaching his son
how to be man. It causes the father’s teachings to
become forceful and destructive. Instead of the son
learning how to be a proud, nurturing husband, he
learns, through example, that a man maintains control
over his family by devouring their will to fight against
him. Both poems come from two women whose
terrible relationships with their fathers had a negative
impact on their adult lives. This goes to show that no
matter how absent a father may be—whether physically,
mentally, or emotionally—in a father-dominated family
structure, his influence cannot be escaped.
Works Cited
Jonas, Shari. “The Effects of the Father Daughter
Relationship on Self Esteem – From First
Love to Self Love.” EzineArticles.com.
22 Apr. 2009. Web. 13 Nov. 2010.
Olds, Sharon. “Saturn.” The Gold Cell. New York:
Knopf, 1987. 24.
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Plath, Sylvia. “The Colossus.” The Collected Poems:
Sylvia Plath. Ed. Ted Hughes. New York:
HarperPerennial, 1981. 129.
Rotunda, Robert J., David G. Scherer, and Pamela S.
Imm. “Family systems and alcohol misuse:
Research on the effects of alcoholism on
family functioning and effective family
interventions.” Professional Psychology:
Research and Practice 26.1 (1995): 95-104.
PsycARTICLES. EBSCO. Web. 13 Nov. 2010.