Essay on slyvia 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".

Throughout the poem the narrator constantly talks about how she doesn’t like certain things about her appearance. Such as in the second line when she says, “ ...my skin has betrayed me”, and when she complains about “...be(ing) the one wearing braces” later on in the poem. In every stanza the girl talks about how she doesn’t like something on her body or talks about something she needs to do to fit in (such as learning how to dance). Her not being confident in who she is creates the theme of self-loathing.

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.

“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.

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.

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

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 is a poem that is full of imagery, symbols, and riddles. It is straight-forward enough in the first stanza to be able to detect who the speaker is, but riddled enough in the second stanza to require an interpretation of the purpose, that’s what makes this poem so enticing.

Do you have a certain hobby or sport that you have been passionate about since you were a child? Lucille Clifton did, and that passion was writing. She felt as if it gave her “a way of walking in the world, a way of seeing the world, a way of understanding the world in one's life.” As an African American woman she didn't really fit in with others. Her poem “ What the Mirror Said” describes the insecurities of a woman and how they need to love themselves for who they are, not by hating their image because of comparison to another.

The poem “The Mirror” is told from an interesting perspective. In this poem the story is being told from the point of view of the mirror itself. The author uses personification to bring the mirror to life. It tells us what it sees and how it perceives things. The first stanza of the poem is intriguing and optimistic as the mirror describes itself. The mirror is “silver and exact” (L 1) alluding that it is perfect, and makes no mistakes. It will show exactly what it sees with no bias towards who or what it is reflecting. It is truthful not cruel. It also refers Itself as “the eye of a little God” (L5) meaning that the mirror reflects truth, sees all things and sees who we truly are. This stanza represents youth and naivety. The poem then takes a depressing turn. Throughout the

From the very beginning, the nature of love in She Walks in Beauty is alluded to be captivating. That is that the woman he sees is very attractive or interesting and that she is taking up all of this thoughts and attention. Typically in this time period, the beautiful women were blonde and pale, opposite to this is the woman portrayed in this poem. The comparison to night and day or light and dark, two completely opposite things, shows one really beautiful thing. In the first line the simile “like the night” (Ln 1) established the initial beauty he saw. In addition, the use of the personification in “tender light” (Ln 5) shows that through the woman’s beauty his

The poem starts off just saying how the main character was “born as usual”. There is nothing wrong with the main character and she is just a normal girl that played with Barbie dolls. It is not until the fifth line that “the magic of puberty” finally hits the author. Sadly, it is during this time when the human mind is so fragile, that the high standards of the mass media on how a women should look start to bear down, crash, and take over a lot