Analysis Poetry

Poetry Analysis/ Discussion
Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Symbol
Water
Symbol Analysis
From the beginning of the poem, where we find out that the mirror is "unmisted" and "swallows" everything, to the end of the poem, where a girl is drowning and a fish is rising, this poem revolves around water. Here, water is both a reflecting surface and an actual lake. So, water, in this poem, is both clear and mysterious. * Line 2: While this line doesn't explicitly address water, it uses the word "swallow" as a metaphor for reflecting. The word makes us think of water, which can itself swallow things, taking them beneath its surface. * Line 3: Again, a water-related term is used as a metaphor. "Unmisted" stands in here for "unchanged." * Lines 10-11: Here we find out that the mirror is a lake. It's a cool image, shifting from the silver of a mirror to the silver of clear water. Then we hear that a woman is searching the reaches of the water for what she really is; if you've ever spent some time peering into water, you'll know that it can be mesmerizing like this. The mythical Greek figure Narcissus even died looking into his reflection in a pond. * Line 14: The tears are another form of water, and the woman is physically interacting with the water of the lake by stirring it up with her hands. She's taking her frustration out on the water. * Lines 17-18: This drowning and rising up is, yet again, a metaphor. With the young girl drowning, and the old woman rising, it seems most likely that the water is a metaphor for time, or aging. Also note that because the old woman rises up "like" a terrible fish, this part of the line is a simile
Color, Light, and Darkness
Symbol Analysis
In talking about mirrors, the sense of sight is pretty important. So, of course, colors and darkness figure into this poem. From silver to pink to moonlight, this poem uses colors and light to give the reader images as they read about a mirror. * Line 1: The color in this line gives us the major clue that – ah ha! – the speaker is not a person, but a personified mirror. Since this is the first line, we think of the color silver throughout the poem whenever we think of the mirror. * Lines 7-8: So the mirror is silver, but now we get the image of the pink, speckled wall, which the mirror reflects most of the time. This pink, speckled image is less exotic and exciting than the mirror's silvery surface. But then in line 8, we find out that this speckled pink wall is like part of the mirror's heart – and hearts often make us think of the color red. * Line 9: In this line, we get our first glimpse of darkness, which separates the mirror from the pink wall it believes is part of its heart. The mirror also mentions that faces play a part in this separation. What does this mirror feel about human faces if it sees them on the same plane as darkness? * Line 13: We hear a lot about darkness in this poem, but it is only appropriate, in a poem about reflections, that we'd see what is lighting up the reflection. However, we only hear that, when it comes to reflections, candles and the moon are liars, that the light they provide is false. The mirror's declaration personifies the candles and the moons, giving them human qualities, like the ability to lie. * Line 16: Again, in this line, we see faces and darkness. But instead of the faces separating the mirror from the pink wall, faces replace the darkness. We'd expect the sky, in the morning, to replace the darkness, but instead, the woman's face is the first thing reflected in the lake.
Reflections
Symbol Analysis
In a poem about a mirror, we can expect a lot of reflections. Plath only uses the word "reflect" once, though. Instead of just repeating this word again and again, she uses personification and metaphor to get her point across. Moreover, the reflections in this poem aren't those of someone checking to make sure she doesn't have anything stuck in her teeth. The emphasis on reflections in this poem shows the importance of appearance to the woman in the poem, and, perhaps, to women in general. * Line 2: "Swallow" is a metaphor for reflecting. This line is also an example of personification – mirrors don't see or swallow anything – but Plath's poem makes this character so believable that we have to remind ourselves that mirrors don't have eyes or mouths. * Line 6: Again, we see personification and metaphor teaming up to mean reflection. The metaphor is that the mirror is reflecting the opposite wall, not "meditating on" (or thinking about) it, and the personification is that mirrors don't meditate, people do. * Lines 7-8: Mirrors don't see, and they don't look; hence we have another example of personification used to create a metaphor for reflection. This time, we find out that it's possible for the mirror to feel that whatever it reflects is a part of its heart, further personifying the mirror. * Line 11: Here we see the importance of reflections. Now, the mirror is a lake, and a woman is searching its waters to learn something about herself. This line is starting to dive into the wider function of reflection in this poem. The woman is treating her reflection in the water as if it could reveal something about herself, and not just her appearance. * Line 13: Ah ha! We caught you, Plath, you used the word reflect! But not without some personification, of course. The mirror is providing an accurate reflection, as if it takes pride in what it does, or as if it has some loyalty to this woman. * Lines 18-19: These two lines give reflections physical power. Of course, this power is abstract – only a figurative young girl and a figurative old woman are in the waters of the lake, but it's a very cool image nonetheless. This line takes reflections from being about present appearances and makes them about past and future appearances, all through the metaphor of drowning and rising in the waters of the lake
Mirror: Rhyme, Form & Meter
We’ll show you the poem’s blueprints, and we’ll listen for the music behind the words.
Free Verse
This poem is written in free verse, which means that it has no set pattern of rhythm or rhyme. Yet, Plath uses rhythm and rhyme deliberately. While her lines have no repeating pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, they read gracefully and naturally.

While none of these lines rhymes blatantly, Plath uses slant rhymes, or words that sound similar, but don't quite rhyme. An example of this is the lines ending in "darkness" and "fish" – these two words sound similar, but the slant makes the rhyme surprising and fresh. Plath also uses repetitive phrases, like "over and over" and "day after day." These phrases, and Plath's attention to sound, help bring a little rhythm and rhyme into this poem's free verse
Speaker Point of View
Who is the speaker, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
It might seem that a poem written from the point of view of a mirror would have a pretty boring speaker, but that's not true of this poem. This mirror has a lot of human-like qualities, which keep us interested. In addition, the speaker's voice remains the same throughout the poem, although it changes in form between the first and second stanza from a mirror to a lake.

We can see the mirror clearly in the first stanza: it's silver, four-cornered, and situated across from a pink speckled wall. We can imagine the mirror hanging in a woman's bathroom, perhaps remaining there for years as different women move in and out of the house; we don't hear too much about the humans in the first stanza except that their faces separate the mirror from its beloved pink wall. We'd think a pink speckled wall would be a little suffocating to look at for the majority of your life, but the mirror feels as if the wall is a part of its own heart. This mirror is also proud of its reflecting skills, calling itself the "eye of a little god," reflecting truthfully exactly what it sees. We could imagine the mirror as an artist in the school of realism, bragging about how true to life it is.

When the mirror switches into a lake, it holds onto these same characteristics, calling less exact reflections, like those influenced by the moon or candles, liars. It claims to be important to the woman it reflects, and she seems to be important to the lake – it reflects her back "faithfully" and seems upset when it sarcastically says she "rewards" it with tears. Yet this women isn't elevated to the status of the pink wall, which the mirror thinks is a part of its heart. In a poem spoken by an inanimate object, we can expect some partiality to other inanimate objects, right?

While we still get a clear picture of the characteristics of the lake, unlike we did with the mirror, we don't really know what the lake looks like, though it must be still enough to show a reflection. We imagine this is a small lake, within a morning's walk from where the woman in the poem lives – close enough that she can peer at her reflection there every morning.
Mirror Setting
Where It All Goes Down
This poem has two distinct settings. In the first stanza, the setting is probably a bathroom, because the wall is speckled pink, and there are a lot of faces and darkness in the room. If the room were bigger, we're guessing that the opposite wall would be a little more interesting, and the lights wouldn't be off so much. But the mirror could be anywhere – a bedroom, a hallway? It's left up to our imagination. We do know that it's a four-cornered mirror, and not an oval one, so this mirror is probably just practical, and not super fancy. Also, the detail that the wall is pink might hint that there are women in the house, and that the mirror is in an area they use. We imagine this mirror in a bathroom, with perfume and hair gel right underneath it. Where do you picture the mirror hanging?

In the second stanza, the setting changes. We know that our speaker is now a lake, but we don't know how big it is, or if it's in a field, by a forest, or even in the middle of a suburb. We're guessing it's a small, clear lake, somewhere mystical and moonlit, but close enough to a house that the woman who looks at her reflection can come and go easily and often.
What’s Up With the Title?

The title, "Mirror," tells the reader who the speaker is in this poem, though we probably could have figured it out without the hint. The title keeps the poem from being gimmicky. We don't spend the whole poem trying to figure out who the speaker is like in a riddle, but we're still a little surprised, or at least intrigued, when we find out that the poem is not merely about, but spoken from the point of view of, a mirror.

In addition to letting the reader know the identity of the speaker, the title "Mirror" has something to say about this poem, and poems in general. All poems, in a way, are mirrors – we look into them, and what we get back from them is, in a way, a reflection of ourselves. What kind of reflection does this poem show you?