Full Fathom Five In Sylvia Plath's poem, "Full Fathom Five," she describes her father in beautiful, abstract terms that indicate aspects of the relationship Plath had with her father. This poem, along with other works by Sylvia Plath, provides much insight into the type of relationship she may have had with her father. The images that Plath uses to describe her father are reminiscent of fairy tails and monsters, where the idea she gives for me about her father is an extraordinary character made of the sea; huge, with white hair and beard. She describes her father's hair as a huge net, giving him a larger than life size, common to a young girl's perception of her father. Another word that comes to mind when I think of her father is that he was an extremely understandable figure in Plath's life, something very possible due to the fact that her father died when she was just eight years old. This is consistent with the title of the poem "Full Fathom Five". Plath's vision of her father as this great mythical, fairy-tale character. In the poem she describes him as one who "rarely emerges". This sentence refers to the fact that she did not know her father for a long time, and at the time she knew him (from birth until the age of eight) she was quite small and vulnerable compared to her father's formidable presence. Another indication of Plath's reverence for her father is the reference she makes to his being "inscrutable." A child is very likely to consider his father a difficult person to approach or ask questions. An ideal father is one who is loving and helpful, but Plath's description of her father conveys neither characteristic. Undoubtedly the troubled childhood that can be deduced from this poem is consistent with later events in Sylvia Plath's life. Plath went through years of depression, eventually committing suicide in 1964. I suspect that Plath felt a lot of anger over her father's death, perhaps for leaving her so early. Yet at the same time, she expresses anger at the life her father led while he lived, implying a sense of insistence on their relationship. Plath wrote another poem about her father titled "Daddy" in which, among other things, Plath calls her father a bastard.