“Mirror”: Reflections of Truth In Sylvia Plath’s poem “Mirror”, the reader takes a look into the messages presented and compares them with the reflections that are cast in a mirror and images in a lake. When reading this poem, we discover that the speaker is the actual reflection that gives the interpretation of its views. The first interpretation is shown as a mirror on the wall “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.” (1), second as the water in the lake because she states “Now I am a lake.” (10), and third through the eyes of an aging woman that is revealed in line 17 “In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman/ Rises toward her day after day…
.” In the first stanza the reflection personifies the ability to take in what it sees without judging stating “I have no preconceptions/ Whatever I see I swallow immediately/ Just as it is, un misted by love or dislike/ I am not cruel, only truthful… .” (1-4).
Many descriptions make the reader see through the eyes of the mirror as if it were able to speak back to him or her. The reflection views its surroundings in a manner of a small child who has the ability to take in or ingest whatever information is presented without regard. Visual imagery plays an important role in this poem and the descriptions make the reader immediately understand the truths within a mirror. In the water, the reflection portrays the shadow of a woman as she soul searches for who she really is in life.
The Essay on The Mother Land As Mirror Reflections On Identity
The Mother (land) as a Mirror: Reflections on Identity in Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea Wide Sargasso Sea is a strangely beautiful and haunting tale of a certain Creole Madwoman locked up in an English attic without a voice and without a past. Jane Eyre provided the inspiration for Rhys novel but the work is not limited to a simple answer to the earlier text. Rhys takes on a multitude of issues ...
“Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness” (16), because she can not find exactly what she is looking for in what she sees through the reflection. As a result, she reminisces about the lies that were told to her in the past, thinks about brief sensations with a flicker of doubt, and gazes through the shadows of the moon while she wanders about passing time aimlessly. She’s been faithful in her visits to the lake, because the candlelight and the moon shades and hides the appearance of her age and blemishes; the reflection has seen the young girl go away and now it sees an old woman. So in reality, does the truth lie in the reflections that are cast through your own interpretation of what you see or from a mirror image? With careful consideration, a reflection can be manifested through one’s own image, and even though an image gives back the truth, the reflecting surface can be deceiving to one’s eye. It is clearly apparent that we all are capable of understanding and recognizing the obvious signs in aging, but one’s behavior, attitude, or external attributes reveal the true presence each and every day. Like a fish coming to the waters surface, age unfolds its true identity.
Works Cited Plath, Sylvia. “Mirror.” Anthology of Poetry: Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk.
New York: Macmillan, 1986. 538.
