What literary devices are used in the poem mirror by Sylvia Plath?

Answer 1

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 a part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

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.

Answer 2

In Sylvia Plath's poem "Mirror," some literary devices used include personification (the mirror is given human-like qualities), metaphor (the mirror is compared to a lake), and imagery (descriptive language that appeals to the senses). These devices help convey the complex themes of identity, aging, and self-perception explored in the poem.