Essay Sylvia Plaths Mirror - 810 Words

Sylvia Plaths Mirror Sylvia Plaths Mirror offers a unique perspective on the attitudes of aging. Mirror displays tremendous insight and objectivity into the natural human behavior of growing older. Plath is able to emphasize the loneliness, hope, despair, and insecurity that awaits us through mankinds incessant addiction with reflection. Mirror expresses the problems associated with aging through terse comparisons between reality and desire. Plathes strength of Mirror lies in its ability to establish a solid comparison among appearance and human emotions between the first and second stanzas. At first Mirror introduces reflection as a precise and accurate force through†¦show more content†¦It is also a very objective telling of both the aging and reflection process in that faces and darkness separate us over and over stemming from the people who come and go in front of this mirror. Who are almost getting in the way so to speak of its life and it can be assumed they already know the range of emotions they are receiving when they look into this mirror. Plathes second stanza is clearly engineered to reveal the darker aspects of reflection. In the second paragraph the perspective changes from a mirror to that of a lake. In doing so does the shift in message for it marks the change in reflection from exact to distorted. She is also able to clearly show this by utilizing a simple reflection of a woman: A woman bends over me searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. (Plathe lines 10-14) This example infers that the woman was firmly searching for a specific reflection and that displays insecurity and longing for something that might have passed due to age. This is especially true when taking into account the candles or the moon which are symbols of romance thus leading towards the suspicion that she was with or searching for somebody. TheShow MoreRelatedA Reflection in Sylvia Plaths Mirror1013 Words   |  5 PagesA Reflection in Sylvia Plath’s Mirror Amanda L. Wilson Eng:125 Introduction to Literature Professor Lyndsey Lefebvre November 18, 2013 A Reflection in Sylvia Plath’s Mirror Sylvia Plath’s poem Mirror (1963) is evocative, provocative, and expressive. According to Clugston (2010) these are important components of poetry. Sylvia Plath’s first line is a projection of the mirror providing its introduction saying, â€Å"I am silver and exact†(Plath, 1963, line 1). The mirror is the protagonist whoRead MoreAnalysis of Sylvia Plaths Mirror1281 Words   |  6 Pagesï » ¿Analysis of Sylvia Plath’s â€Å"Mirror† Sylvia Plath is known as the poet of confession. Her life is strongly connected to her works. She uses poetry as a way to confess her feelings, to express and release her pain in life. â€Å"Mirror† is one of her most famous poems. Sylvia Plath wrote the poem in 1961, just two years before her actual suicide. After suffering a miscarriage, she realized that she was pregnant again. She and her husband moved to a small town and their marriage began going worse. TheRead MoreSylvia Plaths Poem Mirror1978 Words   |  8 PagesMirror In today’s day and age, it seems that some would do anything to erase a crease in their forehead, or a crinkle on the outskirts of an eye. Because time is something that we can never get back, growing older is an idea that many try to deny, especially in today’s society. Told from a mirror’s point of view, the mirror in the poem witnesses the truth of what it means to age. Sylvia Plath’s poem, Mirror, is a poem that deals with the truths and lies in the struggle a woman goes through whenRead MorePoetry Explication of Sylvia Plath’s â€Å"Mirror†949 Words   |  4 PagesPoetry Explication of Sylvia Plath’s â€Å"Mirror† The first thing one can notice in Sylvia Plath’s poem â€Å"Mirror† (rpt. In Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 9th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2006] 680) is that the speaker in the poem is the mirror and the woman in the poem is Sylvia Plath. As you read through the poem, the lake is relevant because of the famous mythological story of narcissus. He was extremely beautiful and one day while drinking from a lakeRead MoreLiterary Analysis Of Sylvia Plaths Mirror1075 Words   |  5 Pagesmonologues in movies. Poetry depicts the emotions nobody dares to talk about in public and shows how much a situations can impact you. These events create emotions into art. 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The author provides many details in order for the reader to grasp the mirrors view on its ever-day sights, but this would be an impossible task without theRead More Truth, Illusion, and Examination in Sylvia Plaths The Mirror656 Words   |  3 PagesIllusion, and Examination in Sylvia Plaths The Mirror  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Who would be so pretentious as to suggest that they were silver and exact, and that they have no preconceptions? Poet Sylvia Plath dares to meditate on the opposite wall in her poem The Mirror to reveal to her reader some of her own insecurities, the theme of this, and several other of her poems. The poet does some introspective exploration in both stanzas; the two carefully intended to mirror each other. It is her useRead MoreSylvia Plath’s â€Å"Mirror†: How a Woman Matures Essay868 Words   |  4 PagesSylvia Plath’s poem â€Å"Mirror† is about a women maturing with time and her mirror is witness to her aging and her journey to finding herself. The mirror serves as a vivid portrayal of women’s life and stride through a very reliable persona, the mirror. Along her required journey she is faced with obstacles, such as herself and time ticking. All through life’s inconsistencies the mirror is the only one that does not hide her truth but rev eals it to her even though she may not want to face reality. ThisRead MoreJudith Wright And Sylvia Plaths Naked Girl And Mirror1458 Words   |  6 PagesBoth Judith Wright and Sylvia Plath explore different feminist views in their poetry in order to highlight the freedom that comes with the empowerment of women and the escapement from the boundaries of social expectations. Wright uses stylistic devices such as punctuation, oxymoron, metaphor, and personification to discuss the insecurities she has with her body in her poem ‘Naked Girl and Mirror’. The oxymoron, â€Å"I see you are lovely, hateful naked girl†, depicts the internal struggle she deals withRead MoreSylvia Plath is an American Writer who Writes Confessional Poems about her Life1117 Words   |  4 PagesSylvia Plath is an American writer, commonly known for her poetry works. Her poetry can be categorized as â€Å"confessional poetry†, which are poems about the poet’s personal life. Her two most famous published collections of poems are The Colossus and Other Poemsand Ariel, but it was not until after Plath’s death that The Bell Jarwas published. The Bell Jar is considered a more personal and semi-autobiographical novel. Throughout Sylvia Plath’s lifetime, she suffered mentally since she was a little