Analysis Of Mirror By Sylvia Plath

In the short story “Initiation” by Sylvia Plath, the protagonist Millicent, a girl at Lansing High School is being tried as a member of an elite sorority. The girls must go through a week of being an older sister’s servant to be then tried on Friday at Rat Court. Only the most popular girls are accepted into the sorority. These popular girls are also the ones who get the most, popular boyfriends. Everything seems like a dream to Millicent except for the fact that her best friend Tracy wasn’t even considered. Although she wants to belong in the sorority, Millicent finds out that things might not be as perfect as they seem. In “Initiation” by Sylvia Plath, the author uses the point of view third person omniscient to allow the reader to

In 1963 on a cold winter day of February 11th, Sylvia Plath ended her life. She had plugged up her kitchen, sealing up the cracks in doors and windows before she was found with her head inside of her gas oven inhaling the dangerous fumes. She was only thirty years old, a young woman with two small children and an estranged ex-husband. A tragic detail of her life is that this is the second time she had tried to commit suicide. Plagued with mental illness her whole life, which is evident within her poetry. She would write gripping, honest portrayals of mental illnesses. Especially within Ariel, the last poetry book she wrote, right before she took her life. Although it’s hard to find a proper diagnosis for Sylvia Plath, it is almost definite that she at least had clinical depression with her numerous suicide attempts and stays in mental hospitals undergoing electroshock therapy. Sylvia Plath is now famously known for her writing and the more tragic parts of her life. Such as the separation from her husband, Ted Hughes, mental illness, etc… Plath may not have intended for her life and art to become inspiration to many people but that has become the end result. Sylvia Plath writing shows symptoms of her suicidal thoughts. To study specific moments in Sylvia Plath’s life, it can be connected to certain writing’s of her’s, such as “Daddy”, The Bell Jar, and “Lady Lazarus”.

Poem Evaluation: “what the mirror said” The poem “what the mirror said”, written by Lucille Clifton, acts as an inspiring, motivational poem for women. While trying to convince the woman looking into the mirror that she is important, trying to help her capture her inner beauty, and helping the subject realize her worth in the world as an individual, the poet builds a theme of personal perception. The notions of beauty, worth and uniqueness, and complexity in “what the mirror said”, are emphasized through metaphors, symbolism, repetition, and spacious stanzas.

Doesn’t everyone wish they could grow up faster when they are younger, but when they actually start to grow up, they just want it to slow down? Aging is a unique experience to everyone and each person deals with it differently. This theme of aging and how people see themselves can be seen both similarly and differently in “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. These similarities and differences can be seen through each author’s tone, each poem’s structure, and each poem’s overall message.

The mirror itself challenges the link between representation and truth‹the images January sees are reconstructions/reflections, rather than the women themselves. Furthermore, the mirror is not even real. It is the poet's metaphor, itself another kind of reconstruction, and so the reader becomes twice removed from these women who are being represented. January bases his non-visual assessment of these women not on direct interaction but on hearsay; it is their reputation among the people that determines what he thinks of their characters (ll. 1591-2). The mirror becomes a metaphorical space in which January can appraise

She remembered her dad's first stroke. He cried on my shoulder that morning in his hospital room when he saw himself in the mirror for the first time. The right side of his handsome face sagged, and he couldn't open his drooping eye. He didn't cry because of vanity, but rather because the image looking back at him represented a lost way of life.

Nonfiction is a genre of writing in which the author reflects on actual events in history. Lucy Grealy writes about an intense part of her life in a memoir. A memoir is written by the person it is about, usually written on the topic of something the author did or

The poem the Mirror is about beauty standards. She talks about how, as a mirror, she shows exactly what she sees and she tells no lies. The narrator states, “I am not cruel, only truthful.” When the narrator becomes a lake, she can also only show truth and reflection of one’s self. The Mirror represents the truth of who we actually are, even if society has portrayed us as or forced us to be someone else.

Poetry Explication of Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” The first thing one can notice in Sylvia Plath’s poem “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

METAPHORS –SYLVIA PLATH I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf's big with its yeasty rising. Money's new-minted in this fat purse. I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I've eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there's no getting off. Sylvia’s Plath’s “Metaphors” is about a woman feeling insignificant during the midst of her pregnancy. Striking imagery is used to explore the narrator’s attitudes about having a child. Plath uses metaphors in every line, including the title itself, making the poem a collection of clues. The reader is teasingly challenged to figure out these clues, realising that the metaphors have

Sylvia Plath's Poetry Wrapped in gaseous mystique, Sylvia Plath’s poetry has haunted enthusiastic readers since immediately after her death in February, 1963. Like her eyes, her words are sharp, apt tools which brand her message on the brains and hearts of her readers. With each reading,

Sylvia Plath's Mirror Sylvia Plath's "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 mankind's incessant addiction with reflection. "Mirror" expresses the problems associated with aging through terse comparisons between reality and desire. Plathe's 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 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

3. Why is the mirror so important to her? Do you think the mirror might have any symbolic significance? If so, what?

Mirrors reflect the truth we see within ourselves. The poem, “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath, explains how a woman that deliberately stares at her own reflection in a mirror and then in a lake. Plath’s poem is written from the mirror's viewpoint and what it identifies and how it describes to the woman within its outlook. Plath presents the mirror with humanlike characteristics, like a heart, but the mirror offers no judgment. The mirror presents the woman's appearance, but more particularly it forces her to focus in her self-inspection. Three elements that I have picked that describes the poem are theme, symbolism, and tone.