In Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Mirror” an inanimate object is personified and given life through its thoughts and experiences. By portraying reflective surfaces in a unique way, the reader is able to consider an uncommon point of view and see them as an entity with emotions of its own. The poem highlights the effects that the mirror and people have on each other by describing the world from a mirror’s perspective and humanizing it.
In the first stanza, the mirror describes itself as “truthful," with the purpose of making the point that it is not cruel or bitte but instead honest and harboring benign intentions. This implies that those who have previously gazed into it have had unfavorable results and disliked the mirror for merely showing them the truth and what is real. The object is reliable in its work, unprejudiced “by love or dislike” (3) when in the presence of varying faces. The calm and declarative tone of the speaker emphasizes the sincerity in its words and furthers the reader’s ability to trust that it really is honest in its reflections of others.
In the second stanza a small transition is made from a life inside the walls of a building to a life outside in the hands of nature. The change in setting permits the reader a slightly different outlook of the speaker. Despite the transition to a lake, the body of water still serves as a mirror to those who “bend over [it], searching [its] reaches for” (10-11) a clearer image of themselves. A mirror is like a person in many ways but not when it comes to lifespan. The longevity of the mirror means that it could hold years’ worth of wisdom as it has met numerous people. This is emphasized when the lake thinks of the young girl that visits every morning and how the years have aged her as “an old woman rises toward her day after day” (17-18). The lake never changes while the very people it reflects are always changing as the days go by.
The relationship between the living and the inanimate is explained through the ways in which a personified object views the world. The mirror is in many ways similar to a person. The human-like characteristics given to the mirror throughout the poem serve to convey its standpoint on those who search for their reflection.
