Mirror:

Sylvia Plath

Presented by:
Maheen Amjad
Ayesha Farid
Bibi Kainat
Ghania Imtiaz
Tooba Samavia
 ● Born in Boston in 1932

● Father: Otto Plath who was a

Sylvia Plath professor at a US college.

Life History ● Wrote her first poem when she

was 8-and-a-half years old

● Started suffering from

depression during college

● First attempt at suicide when

she was 20 years old

● Studies at Cambridge
University where she met her
future husband Ted Hughes
1. First poetry collection: Colossus
2. Had two children with Hughes: Frieda (1960) and
Nicholas (1962)
3. Hughes left Plath in 1962 for Assia Wevill who was also
a poetess

4. Plath again fell into depression and wrote her poetry

Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath
collection “Ariel”

5. Published “The Bell Jar” in 1963 under the pen name

Victoria Lucas

6. After publication of this collection, she committed

suicide by inhaling gas from her oven

7. Her date of death is February 1963

Assia Wevell
 Mirror: Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I 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 part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and

over.
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.
 Literary devices used:
1. Personification
A figure of speech in which inanimate objects
are endowed with human qualities.
“I am silver and exact. I have no
preconceptions.”

2. Metaphor
The comparison of two unlike things without
the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’
“The eye of a little god, four-cornered.”
1. Hyperbole
These are exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken
literally.
“Now I am a lake”

2. Simile
Comparison of two unlike things by the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’
“Like a terrible fish”

3. Alliteration
The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of
adjacent words.
“I see, I swallow”
● Imagery
It is the visually descriptive or
figurative language, especially
in a literary work.
“It is pink with speckles”
Thank you for your attention!
Feel free to ask any question… 😊