Question

Poetic devices in the poem "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath?

Answer 1

• Personification : The mirror has been personified as a first person voice in the poem as

“I am silver and exact.”

• Metaphor : The mirror describes itself as the eye of a little god and a lake which is a metaphor.

• Simile : the last words of the peom which says “ like a terrible fish” is a simile.

Answer 2

The poetic devices in the poem ‘Mirror’ by Sylvia Plath are:

• Personification: Personifies animals, nonliving and abstract things to human life. The poem personifies mirror which is narrating its feeling to the reader personally. Ex., ‘I am silver and exact’.
• Metaphor: This device implies a hidden comparison or depicts an underlying meaning and not a literal meaning. Ex., ‘The eye of little god’, ‘reflective water’.
• Simile: Compares two entities directly and emphatically. Ex., ‘like a terrible fish‘ in the poem, where the mirror is compared to a fish.
• Imagery: Visual description. Ex., ‘opposite wall, it is pink’.
• Allusion: Unrelated, non-contextual referencing. Ex., ’barren woman’