Mirror

__**Mirror By Sylvia Plath **__media type="youtube" key="_veJ4Poo_ws" height="315" width="560" align="right"

I am silver and exact. I ha ve no preconceptions. What ever you see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful--- The eye of a 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. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">I am important to her. She comes and goes. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.



__**<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Biography **__ <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 27, 1932. She studied at Smith College and Newham College, Cambridge, before receiving commendation as a professional poet and writer. She married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. They lived together first in the US and later moved to England. In 1963, Plath published a semi-autobiographical novel, //<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">The Bell Jar //<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Then on February 11, 1963, during one of the worst English winters on record, Plath committed suicide. She has suffered from severe depression for much of her adult life. She wrote a note to her downstairs neighbor instructing him to call the doctor, and then she committed suicide. There has been some controversy as to whether or not she really meant to kill herself because the of the letter she left asking for the doctor. Despite her death, she was the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize after death.


 * __<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">TIME __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Theme- **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">If you want to know the truth, be as objective and detached as a mirror. Humans are not objective because they see what they want to see, and not what is actually reflected in the mirror. Also, unlike humans, a mirror has "no preconceptions." Humans, on the other hand, know what they want to see before looking into a mirror.


 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Imagery- **
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Personification
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">The whole poem is from the view point of the mirror
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gives human characteristics to the mirror
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">“I am”
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">“I see”
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Simile
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">"Like a terrible fish"
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">Compares the emergence of an old woman from a young girl to a terrible fish rising from the depths
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Metaphor
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">"The eye of a little god"
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">Like a god, the mirror knows the truth and is more objective than a human.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Word Choice
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Double Meanings
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">"Faces"- could refer to people as well as geometric surfaces like walls


 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Meter- **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">This poem is a lyric poem in free verse, so it lacks rhyme, meter and iambic pentameter. It is made up of two stanzas of nine lines each talking about a different topic. The first stanza focuses on the mirror while the second focuses on the lake. The poem is written in first person from the point of view of the mirror.


 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Emotion- **
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Tone- The poem has a very serious and detached tone. The short and precise statements create a feeling of detached loneliness. The mirror spends most of its time "meditating on the opposite wall" and the only time that it does not is when someone chooses to look into it.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mood- The mood of the poem seems very sad, lonely and almost depressing. The mirror is stuck spending almost all of its time staring at a wall and the woman drowned a young girl in the lake. The drowning shows that this is an isolating experience because the old crone is becoming who the young girl was.

__**<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Questions **__ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">1. Who is the speaker of the poem? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;"> a. A lake <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> b. A fish <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> c. A woman <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> d. A mirror <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> e. The author

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">2. How is the mirror like the "eye of a little god"? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> a. It can control lives <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> b. It loves all things <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> c. It can be cruel <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">d. It revels the truth <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> e. It sees all things

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">3. What is the women searching for in the lake? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> a. Her once beautiful face <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> b. The truth <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> c. A young girl <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> d. A fish <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> e. An old woman

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">4. How does the second stanza shift the focus of the poem? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> a. By focusing on the emotions of the mirror <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> b. By focusing on the ways the mirror is like a god <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">c. By focusing on the interaction between the mirror and the woman <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> d. By focusing on the interaction between a fish and the mirror <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> e. By focusing on how the mirror is like a lake

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">5. Based on lines 13 and 14, what is the cause of the woman's behavior? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> a. She is angry about being lied to <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> b. She is nervous about be judged <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> c. She is saddened by her image <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> d. She is unhappy about the end of a relationship <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> e. She is happy that she sees the truth

__**<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sources: **__ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mirror: A Study Guide. Cummings Study Guide, n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides6/Mirror.html>. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Poem of the Week:Mirror. Poem of the Week, n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <http://poem-of-the-week.blogspot.com/2009/04/ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> mirror-by-sylvia-plath.html>. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Poetry Elements. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <http://ta.thet.net:16080/ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> ~Chapin/WebPage/StudentWebPages/Rosie's%20revised%20poetry%20folder!/ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> LiteraryElements.html>. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sylvia Plath. Wikipedia, n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Sylvia_Plath>.