Daddy Freedom and Confinement Quotes Page 1
stanza, line
| Quote #1 You do not do, you do not do |
In the very start of the poem, we get an image of how our narrator is trapped – she's calling her father a shoe that she's been stuck inside of. Even more, by starting off with a nursery rhyme, she appeals to 1960s images of her gender, which focused on the role of women as mothers and housewives.
| Quote #2 The tongue stuck in my jaw. |
Even the speaker's tongue is stuck in this poem! She can't say the word "I." She appears to be so trapped by her fear of her dead father that she's unable to define herself.
| Quote #3 An engine, an engine |
The speaker brings up a terrifying image of confinement, that of the Jews imprisoned in concentration camps during the Holocaust. It's a big risk for the speaker to compare herself to a Jew – it's a serious topic that she could be seen to be taking lightly. But she feels that she has been, and that women have been, victimized enough to merit the metaphor.
