Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckled. I have looked at it so long

I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A women bends over me,

Searching my results 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 women

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Aging

The poem “Mirror,” could possibly have two different speakers, One could be the author herself, talking about personal experience. Which I think is the case in this poem or it could be an outsider she is talking about.

In the next stanza Plath uses a lake as a metaphor for herself, (A women bends over me, searching my reaches for what she really is,) which is again a reflecting surface. An old woman comes to look in the lake and although the image she is presented with upsets her she continues to come back. This demonstrates that humans have a innate urge to try to see themselves as they really are, even if sometimes the image is not what they want it to be. Plath describes the moon and candlelight’s as liars, because they are able to hide people’s flaws. Which Plath now depends on the lights of liars, candles, and the moon. I believe this is a symbol of how people lie to themselves about who they truly are by covering up and hiding themselves with material things wealth etc. But it doesn’t help and because it talks about tears and agitation. Which symbolizes the frustration of the women feels when she sees herself in the mirror. Each morning in her face replace the darkness, is referring to when she looks in the mirror every morning relieving the darkness from it. The last two lines describe how the old women s aging. The image of drowning a young girl is very powerful, the old women feels as though she has wasted her youth, and she is very scared about getting older. This also has to do with the preconception the society places on people on being perfect, young, and forever beautiful.

Some topics in this essay:
Sylvia Plath, eye god four-cornered, heart flickers, liars candles moon, women bends searching, opposite wall pink, bends searching, flickers darkness separate, tears agitation, women feels, darkness separate, women bends, looked heart, wall pink, opposite wall, god four-cornered,