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1. Mirror
SYLVIA PLATH

2. Name ajeetpal
siNgh
Class 10th
a
subjeCt eNglish

3. Sylvia’s Life

4. Her Life
Sylvia was born on
October 27, 1932 in
Newton, Massachusetts.
She married Hughes on
June 16, 1956

6. Her Life
Sylvia and Ted had two
children Frieda and
Nicholas (1960, 1962)
1962 She learned of
Ted’s infidelity and they
separated.
Committed suicide on
February 11, 1963.

7. Mirror
1st
Stanza
I am silver and exact. I have 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.

8. 2nd
Stanza
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.

9. Writing Style
 Written in first person
 Use of simple sentences
 Very few adjectives due to
use of metaphors
 Use of Personification

10. Analysis
Stanza I
Addressed by an
inanimate object
 Sets out to define itself and its
function
 Has no preconceptions because it is
without memory or ability to reason.
 It is omnivorous – swallows everything
it confronts without making
judgments that might blur, mist, or
distort.

11. It is god-like in its
objectivity and
incapability of
emotional
response.
Most of the time it
meditates on the
opposite wall,
faithfully
reproducing its
colors and design
until darkness
intrudes or
intervenes

12. Analysis
Stanza II
The mirror becomes a
perfectly reflecting lake,
unruffled by any
disturbance
A Woman bends over the
lake like the mythical
Narcissus.
 No matter how deeply she searches,
she sees only her actuality or surface
truth.
 Unlike Narcissus, the speaker cannot
fall in love with what she sees.

13. The candles and moon to which
the woman turns are liars capable
of lending untruthful shadows and
romantic highlights – unlike the
lake surface/mirror, which renders
only faithful images.

14. Unhappy by what
she sees, she
weeps and wrings
her hands.
 The youth and beauty
once reflected during
her morning visits are
drowned in the
metaphorical depths of
the lake.
 What slowly emerges
from those depths is the
terrifying fact that she is
aging.

15. NarcissusNarcissus
(mythology(mythology)
In the various stories he is
exceptionally cruel, in
that he disdains those
who love him. As divine
punishment he falls in
love with a reflection in
a pool, not realizing it
was his own, and
perishes there, not
being able to leave the
beauty of his own
reflection.

16. Self-Self-
centerednesscenteredness
 The mythical Narcissus
alienated himself not only from
other
people but from the
nonhuman beings and
presences of the natural
world.
 Gazing into a beautiful pond
he saw merely his
personal
reflection and
absolutely nothing of nature.

17. Without any intention of doing so, the mythical
Narcissus provides each of us with a
warning. His eternal self-obsession cautions us
against such self-centeredness.
We live in a culture that rewards and
encourages such selfishness. Focus on self-
interest is encouraged. Every commercial is a
chance to buy a new mirror – an offer of some
new way to serve ourselves. As pilgrims
passing through this world, we will walk
through the land of Narcissus.
We have the chance to be renegades. The
mirrors we use are held to our souls – not to our
faces.
 http://righteousmonster.com/blogs/bodie/august/land-narcissus