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
Mirror
Tone = precise and exact. prejudice The voice of the Mirror is direct and straightforward.
is
speaking.
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
No hesitation
Whatever I see I swallow immediately Unlike a person, the mirror doesn't project feelings onto what it sees.
unclouded
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. It has no purpose other than to show what is there.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚ Implying honesty is greater than kindness.
change Can see eveything
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 The woman is objectified: highlighting beauty
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, and not personality.
Sense of desperation searching for her beauty and youth that time has robbed
Searching my reaches for what she really is. her of.
The shadows they make are not precise- they
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. can’t be trusted. METAPHOR
its "faithfulness" to the woman isn't a form of love or duty, but simply a
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. byproduct to reflect everything that comes into its view (mirrors purpose)
Juxtaposition anxious
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
Mirror prides
himself on I am important to her. She comes and goes. → Time has passed.
this fact.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.The mirror is her companion.
The mirror has In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
swallowed her
beauty and Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
youth.
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.
Sibilance → creates a hissing
sound that is pleasing.
Although the mirror’s tone is
direct, the language is poetic.
The Mirror
Mirror
Tone = precise and exact. prejudice The voice of the Mirror is direct and straightforward.
is
speaking.
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
No hesitation
Whatever I see I swallow immediately Unlike a person, the mirror doesn't project feelings onto what it sees.
unclouded
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. It has no purpose other than to show what is there.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚ Implying honesty is greater than kindness.
change Can see eveything
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 The woman is objectified: highlighting beauty
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, and not personality.
Sense of desperation searching for her beauty and youth that time has robbed
Searching my reaches for what she really is. her of.
The shadows they make are not precise- they
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. can’t be trusted. METAPHOR
its "faithfulness" to the woman isn't a form of love or duty, but simply a
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. byproduct to reflect everything that comes into its view (mirrors purpose)
Juxtaposition anxious
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
Mirror prides
himself on I am important to her. She comes and goes. → Time has passed.
this fact.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.The mirror is her companion.
The mirror has In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
swallowed her
beauty and Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
youth.
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.
