The Theme Of Themes In Sylvia Plath's Mirror

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Sylvia Plath had a troubled life. She failed to commit suicide once. She ended up marrying and having two kids, but the marriage ended in divorce. She later tried to commit suicide again, and this time she succeeded. As shown in the poem Mirror, when we aren’t content with our reflection, or focus too much on finding ourselves through the mirror, we will end up losing ourselves and never find happiness, just like Plath. We need to find ourselves without looking in the mirror, because if we search for ourselves in the mirror, we will actually end up losing ourselves.
The first element the reader should consider in the poem, is the title. The title of the poem is a major factor the reader should consider when reading this poem. The title of this poem helps the reader understand the speaker of the poem, and helps portray the theme of the poem. The title tells us the mirror is the speaker of the poem. The first time reading the poem, I didn’t take into …show more content…

The theme of finding ourselves is related to the smaller themes of love and innocence. The themes of this poem, are ones that relate to Plath’s life greatly. She wasn’t pleased with herself and ended up killing herself. The themes of this poem are trying to tell us to be content with ourselves. They’re also telling us to find ourselves by looking within ourselves, and not in the mirror. The smaller themes that help express the greater theme of finding ourselves, are to love ourselves for who we are and to trust our reflection. All of the themes of love and innocence work together to elaborate on the main idea of how we view ourselves in a mirror, and how it affects us. We often try to find ourselves by looking in a mirror, however, we may end up losing ourselves in the process. The theme of the poem wraps up by saying that by trying to find ourselves by looking in a mirror, we will end up losing our childlike