Garcia 1

Itzel Garcia

AP lit/comp

O’Meara

29 November 2021

Peace in Truth

In the poem Mirror, Sylvia Plath uses tone and personification to reveal a theme of

finding peace by accepting the truth occurring unchanged by individual expectations.

The speakers shift in tone reveals a hidden animosity expressed through an isolation. The

mirror depicts a detached tone through the way in which she describes herself from lines 1-6.

The first line in the first stanza she says, “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.” Her

description is simple and short suggesting a lack of complexity and character as she is “exact”

insinuating an inability to change despite the circumstance. To follow this thought, in the 3rd line

she says she takes in information “just as is, unmisted by love or dislike.” This expresses a lack

of emotion to establish her own credibility and depict herself as being completely unbiased.

However, a shift in tone is seen in lines 7-9. In this the speaker shifts from short technical

descriptions to describe the wall on the opposite side driven by emotion while she had previously

claimed otherwise. The speaker talks of a wall she is constantly looking at, line 7 she says “I

think it is part of my heart. But it flickers. / Faces and darkness separate us over and over” The

speaker clings to this wall to create a false sense of company while the truth is the mirror is in

fact alone. Any time her sense of hope is covered by the lights going out she is reminded of this

loneliness. A hypocrisy can be seen, she is not emotionless but depicts herself as so to not face

the truth of her reality.

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The speakers use of personification post-shift explores the irony of the mirrors critiques,

reflecting her own dependency and furthering the idea of an animosity held in the second stanza.

The speaker is now a lake and not a mirror, and there is woman looking down at her reflection.

By personifying herself as a lake the speaker gives herself a power over this woman. Ironically,

in line 3 of the second stanza she says, “then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon”,

because the changing in light affecting its accuracy. By putting these methods down the speaker

elevates her importance, even though, as seen previously, the mirror did not hold as much

credibility as she may try to portray. This suggests that the speaker is forced to lie even to herself

to believe she is important and needed. The speaker still does not sympathies with this woman,

separating herself from her fears, lines 4-5 in the second stanza she says, “I see her back, and

reflect it faithfully. / She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands”. The lake sees things

exactly as they are which is what is important, but the woman is too overcome by her

expectations of youth to appreciate the truth the lake reflects. Not seeing the problem, because as

she explains she does not reflect anything but what it truly is. In lines 7-8 of the second stanza

she says, “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…”. By using the word darkness to describe what separates

the woman from the lake as she used to describe what separates the mirror from the wall, it

suggests they reflect the same tendency. She does not understand the woman’s fear of the truth

and dependency on the lake as a reflection of her own need to avoid a truth and exist with a false

sense of reality. This woman constantly depends on clinging to the hope that the truth she fears

will not be reflected to her, that she can maintain her youth. However the speaker is not aware of

her own warped perception and the way in which does not allow herself to find a sense of peace

as a mirror without depending on the wall for a false sense of comfort, and the way in which she
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depends on this woman to come back as a lake in use of her reflection to give her a sense of

importance when she feels otherwise alone. Suggesting that by reliving this avoidance through

her hypocrisy she delays finding peace in any form she inhabits, as the woman lacks peace from

her constant fear of aging.

In conclusion by attempting to isolate herself from her emotions seen in the shifting of

tone and her detachment from these feelings through her personification, the speaker expresses

the hypocrisy of her avoidance. The speaker insinuates through the irony presented in the poem

that to feel true peace one must come to terms and accept the truth of their reality in order to

fully appreciate one’s existence. Seek to find peace instead of changing different aspects of ones

being to try to conform to a life without acceptance, just like the speaker always sought out

validation and depended on something else as a mirror and as a lake as long as she avoided her

truth as she expected to be needed in order to hold any importance.