The Figures Displayed in Sylvia Plath's Mirror

Can a mirror reflects our feelings? This is a question that all of the readers of this poem have done at least one time. Imagery is the use of words to stimulate one or more of the five senses. In the case of Same Song the visual sense stimulated is the visual sense. It is stimulated through the use of very descriptive details of the entire life; the morning and night of two kids of the persona. In poem Same Song by Pat Mora, the author uses visual imagery to characterize a young man and a young woman that are uncomfortable with how they look.

Mirroring is a literary device used by Edgar Allan Poe to provide symmetry to his story “Ligeia” (Stroe). Ligeia is the story of a man whose entrance into the fantasy world has all of the suddenly been blocked. The characters that mirror each other are Ligeia and Rowena (Stroe). Additionally, Ligeia is a personified dark fantasy and Rowena is a representation of a bland, boring reality in which the narrator is unhappy living in. As Ligeia and Rowena interact with the unidentified narrator, they push him to the far boundaries of fantasy and reality. The narrator admits to the loss of his own sanity because of the interactions with both Lady Ligeia and Lady Rowena.

The mirror on the bedroom wall examines the public perception of her private life. Looking only at its reflection, the audience cannot tell the room is in a mess; the rosebush and the dirt trail are not apparent to the audience. In the mirror, only the back of woman’s head is evident. Her face and her emotions are hidden from the mirror. It appears as if she is doing an ordinary task; she could very well be sitting on the bed, reading a book. She turns her back to the mirror and denies it a true reflection.

A reflection is a recreation and counterpart of an image; something that is identical in an opposite way. As the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, stares into the walls of her isolated room, she begins to find a woman hidden among the patterns. She becomes invested in what these patterns mean and slowly starts to mimic the movements of the woman in the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her. The narrator’s so-called “nervousness” advances into insanity throughout the story as she becomes lost in this imaginary reflection she sees in her room. Gilman uses a progression of personification while describing the yellow wallpaper to show that the narrator is seeing a reflection of her own mental state, and attempting to

The imagery in the poem, specifically natural imagery, helps use the reader’s senses to develop a vivid depiction of the speaker’s connection to nature and dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality. The speaker’s continued use of the “moon” reflects her attribution of feminine identity and idolistic character to the moon. As opposed to referencing herself and her personal insomnia, she uses the imagery of the moon “beyond sleep” to convey her internal struggles with insomnia and her reality. Throughout the poem, the speaker also refers to shining, reflective surfaces, such as “a body of water or a mirror”, to describe the inverted reality in which the speaker experiences reciprocated love. Reflective surfaces often invert the image that is projected into them, seemingly distorting the true nature and reality of the projected image. The speaker’s reference to this reflective imagery highlights her desire to escape the burden of a patriarchal society and assume an independent and free feminine identity. Specifically, the use of natural imagery from the references to the “moon” and “a body of water” convey the speaker’s desire to take refuge within the Earth or in the feminine identity of the Earth, Mother Earth. Feminine identities are often related and associated with aspects of nature due to the natural cycle of the menstrual period and the natural process of procreation. The speaker takes advantage of these connotations to suggest Earth and natural imagery as an escape from the man-made terrors of male dominated society. In the second stanza, the speaker uses extensive imagery to develop metaphors conveying the speaker’s experience of jealousy of the moon

“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me,” (pg. 115, Wiesel). The author’s message is revealing how someone should be able to overcome their struggles if they truly have confidence in themselves. Being that almost everyone goes through struggles at least once a day, the message about looking pass through the obstacles that seem really hard by thinking that it is achievable. It connects to everyone because of how people go through hardships in their life time varying in their age drawing out the conclusion that everything is achievable if only you believe that it is possible to do.

In the poem “Stars Over the Dordogne” by Sylvia Plath, the author illustrates a message by using disparate techniques. It slowly develops as the readers go throughout the piece, however all the techniques are effective and leave an impact on the audience. Moreover, it causes the audience to have various views throughout the piece. The sense in this poem is about how everyone has a divergent outlook on the world. The author shows this, by using imagery, personification, and shift to develop a message.

It may seem like the mirrors are a simple afterthought and a way for the author to sound more descriptive. But after a second look, it’s not hard to tell that the mirrors have a deep connection to Melinda. A great example of this is within the first two weeks of school when Melinda gets home from school and goes up to her room, “I watch myself in the mirror across the room. Ugh. My hair is completely hidden under the comforter. I look for the shapes in my face. Could I put a face in my tree, like a dryad from greek mythology? Two muddy-circle eyes under black-dash eyebrows, piggy-nose nostrils, and a chewed up horror of a mouth” (Page 16). This quote shows how she feels ugly and can’t stand her appearance. Another great quote that shows the connection is when Melinda decides to re-decorate her room, “The first thing to go is the mirror. It is the screwed to the wall, so I cover it with a poster of Maya Angelou that the librarian gave me. She said Ms. Angelou was one of the greatest american writers” (Page 50). This was during a phase Melinda went through where she was truly in a bad place but wouldn’t just face the fact that she needed to tell someone about what had happened to her. Towards the end of the book Melinda gets more comfortable with mirrors as she also gets more comfortable talking again. The mirrors symbolize how Melinda feels about herself

Anderson tells a whole story through one object; a mirror. Melinda refuses to look into her own reflection after the incident at the party, she is always hiding or covering her mirrors. Hiding her reflection symbolizes Melinda hiding her problems. Looking into the mirror, she stares right at her flaws, bringing her

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

A third example is the mirrors. The mirror represents seeing oneself clearly and their self reflection. One example of this is Montag reflects his life when he meets Clarisse which she made a big impact on his life. She changed way he see the world and, she asked him one question. “Are you happy.”

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

In this reflective essay, Stewart discusses the struggles her and her family went through. He family has faced a lot of struggles and throughout all these struggle a mirror was there to see it all. The essay starts off when Stewart is arguing with her mother then blinded by anger she broke the family mirror. It all started with her great-grandmother Elsie when she lost her husband in a tragic fire. The mirror was the only thing left in this fire. Elsie passed this mirror on to her daughter Ruby.

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

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