What is the symbolism in Mirror by Sylvia Plath?

Answer 1

Speaker: first person, mirror

Audience: those who look into the mirror

Speaker: The mirror says that it's not judgmental and it just reflects everything it sees

Purpose: despair of loneliness and emptiness, of relationships come and gone, with none bearing the fruit of a soul- satisfying true love

Imagery in poem: poem uses personification for the mirror is talking and is given human characteristics. Mirror is also referred to like a lake

With the beginning of the second stanza, the poem takes on a much darker tone. The change is abruptly signaled by the presentation of a different type of mirror: the reflective surface of a lake. Plath has good reason to use water imagery in these final lines, since it provides the same reflective qualities as the mirror, but also suggests depth, coldness, the unknown, and the threat of death by drowning. A mirror is unlike a person because it does not lie.

The closure is an example of the type of sudden, unexpectedly violent, imagery for which Plath's poetry is famous. The lake imagery is developed, as the mirror becomes a grim reminder of the woman's own lost youth; it is she, the poem suggests, who had been the "young girl" who was "drowned" in the lake. Here the lake seems to represent time: it is time that has "killed" the young girl and turned her into an "old woman." Plath then employs a rather shocking metaphor, comparing the woman's reflection to "a terrible fish" rising from the depths of a lake: her face has been made grotesque by the passage of time. A terrible fish rising can be the death of the person or of aging.

Answer 2

In Sylvia Plath's poem "Mirror," the mirror symbolizes a truthful reflection of oneself, stripped of illusions or facades. The mirror also represents the passage of time and the inevitability of aging, as reflected in the lines "The eye of a little god, four-cornered." Ultimately, the poem explores themes of self-perception, mortality, and the search for identity.

Answer 3

What i understand of the poem "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath is that she is the mirror in the first stanza a mirror is silver and exact it doesn't lie or hide the truth it reflects exactly what it sees.

in the second stanza she is a lake which also reflects exactly what it sees. "in e she has drown a young girl and in me an old woman rises toward her day after day..." meant that her reflection used to be bright and young and that of a little girl. Now it is an older woman looking back through the mirror at her.

Answer 4

the poem mirror explores and reveals the complex relationship that we have with truth-the truth about ourselves.the mirror pains to be so objective-without any prejudice.the poetess calls it a four cornered god as it judges everyone unbiasedly without emotional attachment.the poem calls the moon and candles liars for they produce a flickering image and hides all blemishes.the very choice of words and writing as the mirror adds to the poignancy of the poem.the relationship between the poet and the mirror is evidently a complex one-they need each other but cause each other pain too

Answer 5

What is the purpose of the ending the poem with a dish

Answer 6

In the literal sense it means that she is looking into a mirror yet in the poetic sense she is describing herself in old age.

Answer 7

Mirror was written in 1963, the same year that she died.

Answer 8

lake is a metaphor...............

Answer 9

What is the tone