Mirror and Face Lift by Sylvia Plath

Essay by breeberryHigh School, 12th gradeA, September 2014

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Mirror and Face Lift by Sylvia Plath

In the twentieth century, Sylvia Plath was one of the most admired and well-known poets who explored and aroused heart felt emotion on the issues in her world through literature. Compelled towards perfection in everything that she attempted, she was a very troubled woman and her lack of self-confidence and personal insecurities took over her, agonizing through a deep depression most of her adulthood prior to sadly committing suicide in 1964. This was evidently shown throughout her poems, as she wrote about her own mental suffering, her distressed marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes, as well as the struggles with her parents, and her own fragmented image of herself.

The poems Mirror and Face Lift by Sylvia Plath are similar in the fact that they both evoke emotion by touching on themes such as vanity, body image, reflection, lack of self-confidence, beauty, and the pressure that women have upon themselves to look good.

Through various poetic techniques such as similes, personification, metaphors, tone, and alliteration, Plath is efficiently able to convey the desired messages and also her depression.

In the poem Mirror, Sylvia Plath writes from the perspective of a mirror in the first stanza and describes the ageing process of a woman who reacts negatively to her withering image conveying feelings of self-consciousness and emotional insecurity. In the second stanza, she becomes a lake, which is like a mirror in the way that it reflects, but reflects invalidly and shows her in a different light. In my opinion, the mirror, lake and woman are all one subject. The women is looking inside of herself and loathes what she see's, expressing through the use of a simile "like a terrible fish". This technique is effective as it shows the amount of...