Literary Analysis Of Mirror By Sylvia Plath

Doesn’t everyone wish they could grow up faster when they are younger, but when they actually start to grow up, they just want it to slow down? Aging is a unique experience to everyone and each person deals with it differently. This theme of aging and how people see themselves can be seen both similarly and differently in “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. These similarities and differences can be seen through each author’s tone, each poem’s structure, and each poem’s overall message.

The Desire of freedom, the temptation of danger and nostalgia for childhood are examples of twists and turns observed going through life, but it is often at their last moment that people take the time to realize how important their surroundings are and the time passed is precious. Frost poem, “nothing gold can stay” is a writing, underlining the lost in which we are confronted and the incertitude of the future. However, Sylvia Plath’s poem is pointing out more and more the unusual way she sees the world and her own life with her writing “Mirror”. With both of these poems, the reader go through the meaning of life according to both authors. Through disparate personification, imagery, and symbolism, Frost and Plath utilize those literacy diverse to emphasize their poems themes human vanity and the fear of aging.

In “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath, the speaker is represented as a mirror that reflects the life and actions of another human being. The speaker develops a casually detached tone right from the beginning of the poem, but also portrays an accepting mood by the end of the work. These tones and moods are expressed through the use of diction, punctuation, metaphors, and imagery. The tone of this poem fluctuates and makes it difficult for the reader to grasp the emotions of the speaker due to the fact that it is a very short piece.

Unlike other forms of literature, poetry can be so complex that everyone who reads it may see something different. Two poets who are world renowned for their ability to transform reader’s perceptions with the mere use of words, are TS Eliot and Walt Whitman. “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” by TS Eliot, tells the story of a man who is in love and contemplating confessing his emotions, but his debilitating fear of rejection stops him from going through with it. This poem skews the reader’s expectations of a love song and takes a critical perspective of love while showing all the damaging emotions that come with it. “Song of myself”, by Walt Whitman provokes a different emotion, one of joy and self-discovery. This poem focuses more on the soul and how it relates to the body. “Song of myself” and “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” both explore the common theme of how the different perceptions of the soul and body can affect the way the speaker views themselves, others, and the world around them.

Poetry lives in spaces where ordinary language cannot do the work, it finds a way to survive through intros in rap songs, commercials or ads, and monologues in movies. Poetry depicts the emotions nobody dares to talk about in public and shows how much a situations can impact you. These events create emotions into art. Sylvia Plath’s story and motive to write poems begins around the same time her father passes, an event that will impact her poetry deeply. A little after Plath’s eighth birthday her father dies from a case of diabetes that he ignores to treat. Plath published one of her first poems at the early age of eight in the children’s section of the Boston Herald. Later, in 1950, she is accepted by Smith College, where she meets an

Throughout numerous works by Sylvia Plath, she is characteristically known for emphasizing conflict, whether it be within herself or in the world around her. This poem dramatizes the conflict between the craving a sense of belonging and feeling useless. To create this effect, the speaker refers eloquently to the notion that she feels bland and unnoticed in comparison to nature. She wishes to possess the same striking beauty that the flowers have in their beds, or the same sense of direction that the trees have within their secured roots. The speaker then attempts to relate herself to her environment but fails, knowing that she will continue to be overlooked even though she and the sky "are in open conversation" (l 18). Finally, after realizing that nature cannot be paralleled when compared, especially to her, she concludes that she is more useful when she is lying horizontally without a purpose, hence the first line. In this way, the speaker seems to imply that she would be more valuable if she was dead and used as fertilizer for those same flowers and trees.

In the poem “Mirror”, by Sylvia Plath, the message of self-image is displayed. Platt wrote this during a time when the views of women were rapidly changing. The reflection of a woman was very important and the feminist movement was beginning to make a bigger impact on the world. The poem shows the woman changing and getting old and what happens to the way women view themselves as they age. Diane von Furstenberg once said, “Aging is out of your control. It’s how you handle it is what matters.” This quote and the poem make the reader curious by seeing the next time they look in the mirror, do they like what they see? Clearly, “Mirror” displays the theme of self-image.

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

In the first poem Mirror, written by Sylvia Plath, a clear message is presented. Growing old is inevitable. Laura Hutchinson states, “I think it's the fact that if life has taught us anything, it's that things get harder as we get older.” The hardest part of getting older is accepting the fact that age is coming. Most people would rather stay in their youth, where they can run and all of their joints work well. But of course, that isn’t possible. Every second our body is aging and there is nothing that anyone can do to slow down the process. “In me she had drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish”(Lines 17-18). A mirror sees every aging process that a human goes through in their lifetime, they see the wrinkles form and the spots increase. But, what matters the most is how someone handles the aging they go through. It will be hard, but on the other hand, it will be fun. And that is truly all that matters.

Did you ever think that a student who excelled in school and appeared fine on the surface would have severe depression and not only end up dying from that cause, but also one of her main inspirations behind her successful poems? Sylvia Plath was one of the most admired poets of the twentieth century. As a young girl she did great in school, although she did repeat fifth grade to be the same age as her fellow classmates, Plath had gotten straight A’s and excelled in English, specifically creative writing. She was first introduced into poetry at the young age of eight where she wrote poem and it appeared in “The Boston Herald. As Plath grew up she tried to find ways to improve her poetry, she mainly relied on the Thesaurus, she also focussed

Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Lady Lazarus”, was greatly about the author’s life: the influence by her suicide attempts, years of troubled mental health, and stressed relationships with her father and husband.

The themes in the poem “Mirror” explore the loneliness, self-perception, and aging of the woman. The women in the poem is captivated with her own reflection. According to Path the women says, “I am important to her, she comes and goes” (Plath 15l). The mirror reflects a woman looking at herself, appraising her reflection. As the woman ages, she awaits on candlelight to cover her flaws. She battles with the absence of her beauty, accepting each day that she is not young and beautiful anymore. The "fish" in the poem represent that inescapable, darker self. Though the woman infrequently misguides herself with the favorable "liars" candlelight and moonlight, she constantly goes back to the mirror for the truth. In the article “The Monsters in Plath’s Mirror” by William Freedman, states that, “It is to look in the mirror and pretend one does not see the monster” (Freedman161). This shows the way that the woman tends to focus on the appearances that makes her a slave to her own reflection.

In her poem, “Lady Lazarus,” Sylvia Plath uses dark imagery, disturbing diction, and allusions to shameful historical happenings to create a unique and morbid tone that reflects the necessity of life and death. Although the imagery and diction and allusions are all dark and dreary, it seems that the speaker’s attitude towards death is positive. The speaker longs for death, and despises the fact the she is continually raised up out of it.

Sylvia Plath’s poem “Mirror” is about a woman who gets older as the mirror watches her. At first, the mirror is “silver and exact” (1). The mirror does not judge; however, it swallows what it sees and reflects that image back (2). The mirror is also “not cruel, only truthful” (4), and considers itself a four-cornered eye of a god (5). Therefore, the mirror sees everything for what it is, and does not lie. The mirror looks across the empty room most of the time (6) and meditates on the pink speckled wall across from it (7). The mirror is attached to the wall, and has looked at that wall for so long, that the wall is thought to be “part of my heart” (8). The darkness in the room and the people who consider the mirror are the faces and darkness that separate the woman and the mirror (9). In the next stanza, the mirror is now portraying itself as a lake (10). A woman is looking into the lake (10), and she is

Sylvia Plath is a poet who faced a lot of hardship in her life between the death of her father, her divorce, and mental health. These tragedies are reflected on in her poetry, especially in her work leading up to her eventual suicide in 1963. I became drawn to her work due to it’s honesty and harsh beauty. The poem Mirror was written in 1961, two years before she ended her life, but it was not published until about 10 years later, in Crossing the Water. Throughout her life, Plath was constantly self reflecting and changing. This poem discusses the changes that were occurring in not only her life, but every woman’s during the events occurring at this time in history, the most influential