Poetry Explication of Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror”

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.

Wrapped in gaseous mystique, Sylvia Plath’s poetry has haunted enthusiastic readers since immediately after her death in February, 1963. Like her eyes, her words are sharp, apt tools which brand her message on the brains and hearts of her readers. With each reading, she initiates them forever into the shrouded, vestal clan of her own mind. How is the reader to interpret those singeing, singing words? Her work may be read as a lone monument, with no ties to the world she left behind. But in doing so, the reader merely grazes the surface of her rich poetics. Her poetry is largely autobiographical, particularly Ariel and The Bell Jar, and it is from this frame of mind that the reader interprets the work as a

To start off is the theme of social anxiety in Sylvia Plath’s Mirror. This poem is about a mirror that spends most of it’s days reflecting the wall, but occasionally, it is the friend of a man or woman. One day, a woman comes to stare into its depths,

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

How Sylvia Plath's Life is Reflected in the Poems Daddy, Morning Song, and Lady Lazarus

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

feelings as positive and negative currents and whichever one is feeling the strongest, it takes

Sylvia Plath uses a lot of allusions in her poem “Lady Lazarus” to add a deep and ghostly meaning to the words that she uses. These biblical and historical allusions also add an extremely angry tone of voice. Ultimately, these biblical and historical allusions show her message that almost dying is an event she likes to be a part of. For example, Plath uses a historical allusion to the holocaust in the beginning of the poem. The reference to the holocaust and other things create the main tone of death.

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

    The Ariel-period poems of Sylvia Plath demonstrate her desire for rebirth, to escape the body that was "drummed into use" by men and society. I will illustrate the different types of rebirth with examples from the Ariel poems, including "Lady Lazarus," "Fever 103," "Getting There," and "Cut."

Mirrors reflect the truth we see within ourselves. The poem, “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath, explains how a woman that deliberately stares at her own reflection in a mirror and then in a lake. Plath’s poem is written from the mirror's viewpoint and what it identifies and how it describes to the woman within its outlook. Plath presents the mirror with humanlike characteristics, like a heart, but the mirror offers no judgment. The mirror presents the woman's appearance, but more particularly it forces her to focus in her self-inspection. Three elements that I have picked that describes the poem are theme, symbolism, and tone.

Some of the dark negative emotions Sylvia Plath shares in this poem can make anyone have sympathy on her feelings. Especially, when she writes,

Some poems are exuberant, while, sometimes poems can be a cry of the heart. Written in 1961, “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath is an emotional poem, successfully personified and narrated through a mirrors point of view. Plath was an American literature figure that wrote poems, novels and several short stories. During her life time, it was always noted that she was chronically gerontophobic, which is the fear of growing old. Plath’s poem represents a woman grappling with the reality of ageing and fear losing her beauty. Plath unfolds…... Through the use of several different literary terms.

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.

In Sylvia Plath’s infamous poem, “Daddy,” she gives us insight into the speaker’s relationship with her father. It may be difficult to understand their connection within the first few lines due to the murky, dark tones of the poem. Did the speaker hate her father, or did the speaker love him? After reading, the poem itself could be seen as a cry for help and to finally acknowledge how his death made the speaker feel. The speaker had lived 23 years of her life without her father, spending that time feeling lonely and trapped, confined within the mere eight years of memories she had with him before his passing. The poet created a powerful image of the speaker’s father using heavy metaphors to illustrate his authority and powerful influence. The speaker lashes out at her dead father in what can be called a “hate poem”, presumably because she feels abandoned by him after his death. The speaker remains elusive throughout the poem on whether she is done with his hold over her, or whether she’s finally gotten through to her father’s character and she now understands him. The poet displays the intricacies of a father-daughter relationship and all of its complexities through diction, metaphors, imagery and tone, creating a compelling piece that makes readers wonder whether there was any love involved.