Essay Sylvia Plath's Mirror

This reflect remembers Montag’s description of Clarisse as a mirror in The Hearth and the Salamander. Granger clearly sees that they need to evaluate who they really are before they start doing new things. Mirrors in the book Fahrenheit 451 are symbols or self-understanding of seeing oneself clearly. Mirrors can also be symbols of seeing who you really are from the outside to the inside. “Come on now, we’re going to go build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them” (Bradbury

become known to them due to mirrors which weren’t objects included in the life that they

It tends to be the trend for women who have had traumatic childhoods to be attracted to men who epitomize their emptiness felt as children. Women who have had unaffectionate or absent fathers, adulterous husbands or boyfriends, or relatives who molested them seem to become involved in relationships with men who, instead of being the opposite of the “monsters” in their lives, are the exact replicas of these ugly men. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is a perfect example of this unfortunate trend. In this poem, she speaks directly to her dead father and her husband who has been cheating on her, as the poem so indicates.

The first thing one can notice in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Mirror” (rpt. In Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 9th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2006] 680) is that the speaker in the poem is the mirror and the woman in the poem is Sylvia Plath. As you read through the poem, the lake is relevant because of the famous mythological story of narcissus. He was extremely beautiful and one day while drinking from a lake he saw his reflection. He looked at it for so long and so close that he fell in the river and died. This shows the consequences of vanity. Sylvia Plath uses this metaphor to show that the little girl that used to look in that mirror has now

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

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.

Anderson tells a whole story through one object; a mirror. Melinda refuses to look into her own reflection after the incident at the party, she is always hiding or covering her mirrors. Hiding her reflection symbolizes Melinda hiding her problems. Looking into the mirror, she stares right at her flaws, bringing her

The pattern, and what transforms the mirror from an object to a powerful symbol, is the fact that Marji’s reflections vary based on how she views herself at the time. The first time we encounter such situation is on page 16, in which Marjane, during her conversation with God, sees herself as demonstrator Fidel Castro. During this time in her life, Marjane had but two aspirations: to be a protester, and the next Prophet. Her relationship with God and His messages comes to define itself in the following chapters. On page 46, Marjane looks into the mirror and chants to herself, “You have to forgive! You have to forgive!” (46) and adds that “I had the feeling of being someone really, really good,” likely alluding to her supposed role as God’s messenger. However, just pages later, we see Marji’s reflection depict her as a devil, and in the same panel she narrates, “Back at home that evening, I had the diabolical feeling of power…” (53) Learning what goes on to rebels behind prison doors changes Marjane, and for a moment her values are forgotten. Finally, near the end of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi incorporates a direct reference to the mirror into her narration, which has significant meaning to those analyzing artistic choices. On page 226, Marjane describes the dark thoughts she adopts about herself in response to her teacher’s question: “what do you want me to say, sir? That I’m the vegetable that I refused to become? That I’m so disappointed in myself that I can no longer look in the mirror? That I hate myself?” (226) In this scene, we see Marjane state that she has started avoiding mirrors, when previously we have seen them play a major role in representing Marjane’s ambitions. Marjane Satrapi successfully informs the reader that Marji has come to despise the person she’s become, but puts on a facade to maintain an image of

In 1963 on a cold winter day of February 11th, Sylvia Plath ended her life. She had plugged up her kitchen, sealing up the cracks in doors and windows before she was found with her head inside of her gas oven inhaling the dangerous fumes. She was only thirty years old, a young woman with two small children and an estranged ex-husband. A tragic detail of her life is that this is the second time she had tried to commit suicide. Plagued with mental illness her whole life, which is evident within her poetry. She would write gripping, honest portrayals of mental illnesses. Especially within Ariel, the last poetry book she wrote, right before she took her life. Although it’s hard to find a proper diagnosis for Sylvia Plath, it is almost definite that she at least had clinical depression with her numerous suicide attempts and stays in mental hospitals undergoing electroshock therapy. Sylvia Plath is now famously known for her writing and the more tragic parts of her life. Such as the separation from her husband, Ted Hughes, mental illness, etc… Plath may not have intended for her life and art to become inspiration to many people but that has become the end result. Sylvia Plath writing shows symptoms of her suicidal thoughts. To study specific moments in Sylvia Plath’s life, it can be connected to certain writing’s of her’s, such as “Daddy”, The Bell Jar, and “Lady Lazarus”.

A reflection is a recreation and counterpart of an image; something that is identical in an opposite way. As the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, stares into the walls of her isolated room, she begins to find a woman hidden among the patterns. She becomes invested in what these patterns mean and slowly starts to mimic the movements of the woman in the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her. The narrator’s so-called “nervousness” advances into insanity throughout the story as she becomes lost in this imaginary reflection she sees in her room. Gilman uses a progression of personification while describing the yellow wallpaper to show that the narrator is seeing a reflection of her own mental state, and attempting to

Sylvia’s Plath’s “Metaphors” is about a woman feeling insignificant during the midst of her pregnancy. Striking imagery is used to explore the narrator’s attitudes about having a child. Plath uses metaphors in every line, including the title itself, making the poem a collection of clues. The reader is teasingly challenged to figure out these clues, realising that the metaphors have

Sylvia Plath was a troubled writer to say the least, not only did she endure the loss of her father a young age but she later on “attempted suicide at her home and was hospitalized, where she underwent psychiatric treatment” for her depression (Dunn). Writing primarily as a poet, she only ever wrote a single novel, The Bell Jar. This fictional autobiography “[chronicles] the circumstances of her mental collapse and subsequent suicide attempt” but from the viewpoint of the fictional protagonist, Esther Greenwood, who suffers the same loss and challenges as Plath (Allen 890). Due to the novel’s strong resemblance to Plath’s own history it was published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath expresses the

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.

Poets, Judith Wright, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickenson all express their views on life and death, however, do so in varying manners. Through imagery, Wright and Plath both consider life’s beginnings, however, Wright considers it to be a beautiful gift, whereas Plath views birth as an empty burden. Subsequently, through structure Dickenson and Wright each acknowledge life, expressing how in some cases it is difficult, yet in other circumstances it is celebrated. Finally, through tone, Dickenson and Plath convey their views on death, yet differ in that Plath believes it is purifying and holds a sick fascination with it, while Dickenson instead holds a unique curiosity about it. Therefore, whilst each poet recognises the journey of birth,

The next stanza moves on to talk about how Plath's apprehension stops her from bonding with he child with these lines: "I'm no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind's hand." Here Plath (the ‘cloud') is resenting giving birth to her image as it reminds her of her own inevitable mortality. The child is the mirror, which reflects the dissipation of the cloud.