Mirror Sylvia Plath Essay

The mirror also says that the wall has become a part of its heart and that it doesn’t like being separated from it.The phrase ‘part of my heart’ is interesting to note here.

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She was unfortunately riddled with mental agony which is often reflected in her poetry.

She was one of the pioneers in the genre of self-exploration and self-discovery.

We will talk here more about the feelings conveyed in the poem.

In the first stanza, the mirror is represented as a truthful object. This shows an acceptance of that loneliness and even affection towards it. It is a common feeling that truth and honesty are the best policy, but in this situation, we discover the complex dilemma where truth is disagreeable.

It can also be argued that the mirror is used as a conduit by the poet to express herself. This may perhaps be the reason why we have such an unusual speaker, ‘a mirror’ as the voice of the poem. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

The poet ‘swallows whatever she sees’, that is, adopts any mode of thinking projected towards her in an attempt to fit in. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.” Next we see the lake as a mirror.The mirror is presented in the first stanza as shiny (silver), exact and non-judgmental.It presents everything as it is without any interpolation of its own.Mirror is a truly unusual and unique piece as it attempts to present truth about the self, unhindered even by personal conceptions.Sylvia Plath was a famous poet of the 1950’s and 60’s.Sylvia Plath chooses a simple everyday object, ‘a mirror’ in her poem and puts perspective to it by assuming its voice and expressing things one would barely think of.By using a mirror as the speaker of the poem, she explores the life of a woman as she grows old from an outward perspective.On one hand the mirror is shown almost emotionless, governed only by truth, but on the other hand it is also shown to have a heart and despite being “unmisted by love or dislike”, as stated in the earlier lines, it shows a shred of affection.Along with the feeling of loneliness mentioned earlier, we also witness the mirror’s cainophobia (fear of change or novelty).The mirror is not driven by likes and dislikes, but is bluntly truthful.It calls itself ‘the eye of a little god.’ This is because the mirror is impartial like a deity and moreover it shows people their true selves like a god who assists us in the discovery of our true nature. The mirror here stands as a symbol of unsullied truth and honesty.