Truthful Charter Of The Mirror example essay topic

In the first stanza, the 'I am not cruel, only truthful' phrase reveals the mirror's personality and charter. Unlike humans a mirror cannot judge her with opinions. Sylvia Plath uses onomatopoeia to give the mirror human characteristics. On line five she writes 'The eye of a little god, four-cornered' which shows that the mirror is given God-like powers over the women. It becomes almost an obsessive relationship between the mirror and the women because she looks to the mirror for comfort only to confronted with the truth about your youth wasting away. The mirror triggers conscious and unconscious memories of her life faithfully.

On line thirteen it reads 'I see her back, and reflect it faithfully' once again showing that truthful charter of the mirror. Regardless of the fact she hates her reflection the women becomes dependent on the mirror, and on line fifteen you can see that relationship were it says 'I am important to her. She comes and goes. ' The phase 'I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. ' Shows that a mirror is not capable of showing anything else, then what is put in front of it.

The mirror shows no color and has no preference. Although the mirror revels reality the women still clings to objects that blind her from the truth. In the second stanza, the phase 'Then she turn to those liars, the candles or the moon's hows that the woman is attempting to hide her flaws behind the darkness. It is very clever that Sylvia Plath used the candles and moonlight in this poem because those two items usually are used for romance.

While searching for her identity she contradicts herself by running away from the truth, instead of embracing it. Even away from the mirror the woman is forced to face reality through nature. The lake is very similar to the mirror because they both reveal the women's true identity and honest reflection. Plath uses a metaphor to refer to the candles and moon as liars because they just reveal shadows, and they only show half of the big pictures. The candles and moonlight don't give the exact truth like the mirror. The candles and moon are just distractions to finding the essential self.

The candle and moonlight show her a deceptive delusion by hiding wrinkles, dentures, hair loss, and weight gain. The phase 'Now I am a lake' reveals the transformation of the mirror. The woman then realizes even outside of her home she can't escape the truth. It is obvious that she is unhappy with her reflection. On line fourteen it states 'She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands,' which implies that she is ageing, and it is difficult for her to except the ageing process with open arms. While she is crying the mirror sees it was a reward and has no sympathy.

The woman misses the youth and beauty of the young girl she was. On line seventeen it states 'In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman. ' It is very difficult for the women to go though the aging process because she feels depressed and insignificant. The last line of the poem reads 'Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish,' indicates that she feels insecure about her reflection. It is interesting that Plath chose a fish instead of any other animal. When Plath used a lake in place of a mirror she may have needed a creature that lived in a lake to compare her feeling of living in the mirror.

She is trying to make to point that a fish depends on water the same way the woman depends on the mirror. Usually fish are very glamorous animals because they come in all different shapes and sizes, but the woman in the poem contradicts that stereotype. She sees herself as a something terrible because of her fading beauty. Sylvia Plath suffered from depression and had very little compassion for herself. This poem shows how she was scared from the truth the mirror was showing her. Throughout this poem there is a theme of the truth and lies.

The poem 'Mirror' is about a woman torn between the true picture of herself and the distorted image others see of her.