Poetry Explication of Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror”
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 drowned and an old woman rises towards her "like a terrible fish". This shows her dislike for herself. Sylvia Plath has been looking in this mirror every day for a long period of time, and she sees that she is getting older and she......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 940
Approximate Pages: 4 (260 words per double-spaced page) |