Mirror - Poem Analysis

The Mirror isn’t mean or harsh, but rather honest. Mirror is personified to tell the story of a woman ageing. Sibilance → creates a hissing sound that is pleasing. Although the mirror’s tone is direct, the language is poetic. The Mirror is speaking. Mirror Tone = precise and exact. prejudice The voice of the Mirror is direct and straightforward. I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. No hesitation Whatever I see I swallow immediately unclouded Unlike a person, the mirror doesn't project feelings onto what it sees. Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. It has no purpose other than to show what is there. change Implying honesty is greater than kindness. Can see eveything I am not cruel, only truthful‚ It is like a god that judges those who stand before it—not out of a desire to be The eye of a little god, four-cornered.mean, but out of an inability to do anything other than tell the truth. METAPHOR focus antithesis Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. There is a barrier to what the mirror can reflect. Over time it has discoloured freckles shift It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long Element of human nature in mirror: tenderness I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers. Time is passing. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Just as whatever falls on the surface of the lake is drowned in it, the mirror also swallows whatever falls on its surface.METAPHOR Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, The woman is objectified: highlighting beauty and not personality. searching for her beauty and youth that time has robbed her of. Sense of desperation Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. The shadows they make are not precise- they can’t be trusted. METAPHOR its "faithfulness" to the woman isn't a form of love or duty, but simply a Juxtaposition Mirror prides himself on this fact. The mirror has swallowed her beauty and youth. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. byproduct to reflect everything that comes into its view (mirrors purpose) anxious She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. → Time has passed. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.The mirror is her companion. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. Simile → The loss of her youth and beauty makes her behave like a fish out of water, which rather than looking elegant and graceful looked, horrid. The woman is trapped in the pond of time. STRUCTURE: • • • • • • Short sentences = direct tone Free verse makes it direct No rhyme, similar line length, iambic pentameter. The similarity in the length of the first and second stanzas symbolizes a mirror reflecting an image. First stanza focuses on the mirror’s description of itself. Second stanza introduces the woman who investigates it every day. This cohesion (connection) in the poem ties into life. SYMBOLISM: THE MIRROR→ Most broadly, it represents the unavoidable reality of aging and mortality.