Analysis of a Woman's Struggle The plague of male dominance and female oppression has spread across time and cultures like a pandemic infection, targeting women. “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath and “Suicide Note” by Janice Mirikitani show the struggle and pain that oppressive forces perpetrate on women. However, both speakers are oppressed in the way they end oppression and the cause of it is very different. Patriarchy has always existed and affects women all over the world. For example, banned bride kidnappings in Central Asia have continued to occur, and women who resist kidnapping face death or are ostracized by their country (Werner 2). “Suicide Note” by Janice Mirikitani is a poem that attempts to capture the thoughts and feelings of a young girl before she tragically commits suicide. The speaker is an Asian-American woman, as is the author. Addressed to his mother and father, the note reads: “I apologize for disappointing you. I worked very hard” (Mirikitani line 7). The quote is an apology, not for the grief her parents will fill when she leaves, but for their disappointment that she has not reached their expectations. The girl knows that her life would be different if she were born a son and states: "If only I were a son, with shoulders as broad as the sunset passing through the pine, I would see the light in my mother's eyes, or the golden pride in mine my father's dream” (10-14). The speaker wishes she were born a son to her mother and father because if she were her parents would recognize her achievements and be proud of her Asian cultures it is common to consider women inferior to men and that parents have higher expectations for their daughter than for their son who has reached their expectations at the moment when... middle of paper... .. his only escape is through his own death, and in Plath's poem, the speaker kills the men who have oppressed her for so many years Although the theme of each poem may not instill the underlined issue, the vibrant imagery, metaphors, repetition and meter in. each poem tells the reader the real problem, that of women paralyzed by the plague of oppressive forces. Works citedblasing, mutlu konuk. American poetry: the rhetoric of its forms. 1987. November 14, 2011. .mirikitani, janice. essense 24 (1993): 46. November 13, 2011. Editor by .shmoop. shmoop. November 11, 2008. November 13, 2011. .shulman, Ernest. "Vulnerability Factors in Sylvia Plath's Suicide." studies on death (1998): 597.