Analysis Of Mirror By Sylvia Plath

Saying Sylvia Plath was a troubled woman would be an understatement. She was a dark poet, who attempted suicide many times, was hospitalized in a mental institution, was divorced with two children, and wrote confessional poems about fetuses, reflection, duality, and a female perspective on life. Putting her head in an oven and suffocating was probably the happiest moment in her life, considering she had wanted to die since her early twenties. However, one thing that was somewhat consistent throughout her depressing poetry would be the theme of the female perspective. The poems selected for analysis and comparison are, ”A Life”(1960),”You’re”(1960), “Mirror” (1961), “The Courage of Shutting-Up” (1962) and

American Translation, the prologue talks about a daughter who invited her mother to check her new bedroom. However, her mother kind of overly reacted when she saw a mirror at the foot of her bed, so her mother puts another mirror, which faced the original one because she thought that this would multiply her “peach blossom luck”.

This simile is a representation of the egocentric attitude of the poet, as the birth of her child is simply a reminder of her disintegrating life. While Wright and Plath both convey views on the beginning life, Wright focuses on how it is natural and beautiful, while Plath considers birth to be a burden. After birth follows life, as expressed by Dickenson and Wright.

The last two stanzas are the darkest, and ultimately appear to put some type of closure on Plath’s life. She obviously believes that she killed her father when she was ten years old, stating that “if I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed

In stanza four, “there is still some water left over” alludes that the friendship of the persona and their company will endure and the strength of it will be enough to “refresh them”, even though their time is limited. Harwood comments on the use of the water motif in “Lamplit presences”; “In “At Mornington”, elements of the past, present and future are used in images of water…the first source of the flux of life: the water of the infinity of death”. The concept of the water motif alludes to the ________ of death and rebirth, and of the transitional stages of life. At the beginning of the poem, water represents the innocence of childhood, toying with the childish belief that life is infinite, displaying the persona as a child being saved by her father and tossed amongst the waves; “…and was caught by a wave and rolled/ like a doll among rattling shells/ and I seem to remember my father/ fully clothed, still streaming of water/half comforting, half angry”. Towards the end of the poem, the water is seen as a method of redemption and death, depicting the persona introspectively alluding to their acceptance of death; “…and when I am seized at last/ and rolled in one grinding race/ of dreams, pain, memories, love and grief/ from which no hand will save me…” This central motif of water, and its

So we ask ourselves, how does poetry gain its power? To answer this question, we examine the work of poets Harwood and Plath. ‘The Glass Jar’, composed by Gwen Harwood portrays its message through the emotions of a young child, while the poem ‘Ariel’, written by Sylvia Plath, makes effective use of emotions to convey artistic creativity and inspiration.

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”.

After reading “what the mirror said”, some readers may say that this poem was not written to embrace the woman’s beauty but to explain that she is confusing and hectic. A reader with this point of view would

“Breaking the surface, shatter an old silence” evokes a sense of commotion as if everything was so silent you could hear a pin drop and all of a sudden there was excitement. This shows that the previous poems she read mean nothing close to what the poems she is reading now. This description provides a distinction between the previous poem she read and this current one. “The lake flowed out again, the swans, the darkening sky”(32-33) shows that there is stuff happening compared to the silence before. The darkening sky causes the girl to lose her doubts further showing how powerful this rush is. The figurative language of describing the swans as having question mark necks shows that the girl may be having allusions as a side effect of how much she is being impacted by the poem. The rush she feels from how interested she is in in poems causes her to lose her morals and her mind for a few moments. The girl is looking at the swans and is thinking about stealing the book “my breath came quickly, thinking it over- I had no money, no one was looking”(39-40). The question mark necks show how truly she was uncertain on what to

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

Plath uses an intriguing personification to start off her poem as the mirror speaks as a human saying “I am a silver” and “I have no preconception”. A first person narrator as if the mirror is an object that express thing from an honest observation. The stanza demonstrates the goal of the mirror from the way it described itself. The objectivity of the mirror is even more accentuated in the second line when the poet writes “whatever I see I swallow immediately”. (Plath 2) Human qualities are also given to the mirror when it says “on the opposite wall, it is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is part of my

mirror. Who are almost getting in the way so to speak of its life and

The next stanza moves on to talk about how Plath's apprehension stops her from bonding with he child with these lines: "I'm no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind's hand." Here Plath (the ‘cloud') is resenting giving birth to her image as it reminds her of her own inevitable mortality. The child is the mirror, which reflects the dissipation of the cloud.

Frost uses simile in the next line to describe the wet sand. He compares it to glass, for in line eight, a sea gull casts its reflection into the wet sand like glass. By using "reflects" in this situation, Frost is creating multiple meanings. The people could be reflecting upon themselves. They could be trying to make themselves feel better by reflecting upon the good aspects of their lives. This could also be showing that even if the sea gull doesn't see its reflection, that reflection is still there, and then someone else may even see that reflection. This supports the idea that the people there at the beach are trying to forget about their problems or fears, but those fears and problems can still be

In the poem Plath is showing her hatred for her father. Plath uses tone to describes her strict, heartless father, but also describes him as “no less a devil” desperate to disremember him. Plath also uses Symbolism to show the distastes she has for her father. In the Poem she compares her father to Hitler stating “I have always been afraid of you, with your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo . And your neat mustache and your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man” (41-45). This shows that her father was an authoritarian who showed little to no feeling and love toward her. Another example of symbolism is when Plath compares herself to a Jew. She was explaining that her life was like she was in a concentration camp “chuffing me like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began talking like a Jew, I think that I might as well be a Jew” (32-34).