The Poem Analysis Of The Mirror By Sylvia Plath

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.

    As the time passes she can clearly see the woman in the paper. The woman in the paper is quiet and peaceful during the day, but at night she is imprisoned by the bars in the paper. This is reflection helps the narrator identify her own bars--her husband John. He is away during the day and at home in the same bed with her at night. She also identifies with the woman in the paper by sharing their similar routine. "At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be"..."by daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy its the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour".

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.

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.

A.n - When the mirror ‘did not cloud’ he knew that his older brother had passed away so he fetched for help from Mary. Although not everyone agreed with Dunstan’s literal or psychological truth about his brother’s passing, they believed he was alive the whole time with a faint heartbeat. Those perspectives cause Dunstan to struggle with the truth around this incident, and focus on the miracle Mary performed on his brother. Also the revival brought out Dunstan’s desire to prove Mary as a saint instead of be happy his brother is

“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.

first verse up, to reflect her life, and all she has to do. The use of

Sylvia Plath was an American Poet who was renowned for poetry mostly in the United States. She, however lived a difficult and depressing life which led to a few futile suicide attempts, but ultimately led to a successful suicide attempt leaving her children to live on without a mother. This end result was due to a multitude of issues in her life from Sylvia’s sanity. She wasn’t the most stable child. Her marriage also played a role in her suicide. Her successes weren’t acclaimed until after her death, when a majority of her work was released. There were two major aspects to her life: her poetry and her sanity. These three combined make up a majority of Sylvia’s life.

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

The speaker seen the cleaning lady in a different light, she was accepting of her and the beautiful person that she is, her job no longer defined her. In the last stanza the speaker says, “Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only the light that can shine out of life” (lines 34- 35). She is reminding her readers to keep an open mind. It is a lesson to learn to put aside social standards, and see the real beauty within each person, before casting judgment upon them.

Rumored to bring seven years of bad luck upon breaking, a mirror allows the reflection of oneself to be seen. Mirrors were also believed to show the soul of the person standing before it. Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon gives this point an interesting turn: feeling incohesive before a mirror represents a lack of identity. Milkman, the protagonist, takes a journey to find his past, and, in doing so, he gives himself an identity and ends up feeling cohesive. Milkman’s contemplation of himself in front of the mirror emphasizes the need to find identity in order to be a complete individual.

It initially shows worry for her children and sadness for departing from them. For example, the passage states that “when she thought of all the food she had cooked… well the children showed it.” She is proud of her work raising her children and this illustrates that she worked very diligently and strenuously in doing so. The theme of pride continues as she remembers the work she did to make life better for herself and her family after John left her. However, death returns as the image of lighting the lamps represents her lifeforce fading and her initial emotion is fear, then peace as “the lamp is lit” meaning the time has come for her passing and there was no need for her children to “hang on to mother anymore,” meaning she is realizing that her children will be fine without her and is making her peace with

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

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

This represents that she has no “fear” of what she truly believes in for herself. The last stanza is the explanation of her completely understood and pleased adult