Mirrors of sylvia plath and claribel alegria

The impact of dark poetry on the reader is made predominantly finished correspondingly dark manner of speaking- this is a third estate view on the source of such kind of poetrys effect. In this essay I wouldnt identical to argue this point of view only I would equal to broaden the perceptiveness of dark poetrys linguisic and semantic tools . Im qualifying to hire dickens verses sharing a unwashed symbol I am reflect by Claribel Alegria and Mirror by Sylvia Plath- to enkindle that they appeal to the reader non so much with explicit promoter similar the choice of words only also implicitly.I will expose the man of twain poles in each numbers and getk an essential role, which semantic oppositenesss corresponding(p) alive-dead, inwrought- out-of-door, body-soul, action-passivity, depth- come on, reflect- hurt, human-monster and human- reverberate play. Besides, I will ob see how the conventional motif of a reverberate as a persons of alter-ego is alter in twain poems into an effective poetic tool, which ,on the ace hand, forms a number of opposite words, and on the some other hand, implies the idea of wo(e) in the ass comment as pain replication and multiplication.First, allow us consider the poem I am Mirror by Claribel Alegria.. The reverberate is a second ego of the cleaning lady, the self that was born in the course of nigh immense suffering. It is a double-sided reflect. Her pain is reflected in the external world, and vice versa, the worlds pain is reflected in her soul. just the pain is so enormous that the reverberate switches on as a protection mechanism. The reflect loosenesss into a brilliant seawall, which defends her from pain. Now she whoremaster see everything perfectly alone she endnot get the picture. To stress the state of hers the phrase I male parentt intent it is repeated a number of times.Like a silver screen, she scans what is going on around very accurately and impartially, tanks that a pproach, raised bayonets, bodies that fallchildren who run. The knife akin external action is contrasted to the internal catalepsy). She wants to bump bet on life because as she says I hurt therefore I hold out. Her ability to find out hurt is bring down to its sensual aspect. That is wherefore she sense of touches and pricks herself. Only by means of physical pain, she can bring prickle her ability to perceive worlds pain but only for a while. In a few moments, she turns rear into the blank reflect that nothing penetrates. She is over again a fleshless tail protected from the pain by a brilliant wall. What is odd is just a vague shop of pain. What is specific of the poem is that it does not reveal the pain itself but the offended mirrored, reflected, remembered. Pain sliding on the quiet hard sur acquaint.let us make these two mirrors reflect in each other by comparing the two poems. As I have already said, Alegria has a kind of wall mirror, a luminous barrier to protect her from pain. It only reflects external world but nothing can penetrate the emerge. It is devoid of depth, it is flat, two-sided but not two- proportionalityed. On the contrary, Plaths mirrors feature is to swallow instanter whatever appears in it. It has another dimension behind it. Depth, not surface is its main(prenominal) attribute. This depth is meant to search there and to be afraid of. It is a lake where a fantastic lean lives.This fish is the fair sexs frightening future. It is someone into whom she is going to turn in the course of time. In two poems mirror is impartial, it implies female passivity, subjugation (Freedman 1993). However, Plaths mirrors truthfulness is seen a kind of rebellion against what woman is pursuit in it. In both cases, internal passivity is contrasted with external action. In Plaths poem the concept of time is of salient importance. It is another dimension but the surface and depth of the mirror. The stillness of a mirror lake i s contrasted with the running river of time.This river flowing through the woman transforms a young beautiful female child into a horrible fish. Hence, existence a piss creature, an old woman is claimed to go to the river of time and eternity more than a young girl, still alien to it. Gradually, late waters of time absorb a woman. A terrible fish is in fact a dead girl, who drowned in the lake of mirror. This is a kind of terrifying rebirth a woman would prefer to ignore. That is why she turns to such liars as the moon and candles. Meanwhile, the mirror reflects her back faithfully. She cannot see her back mirrored, and that is an alpha idea. We cannot see our back, i.e. the opposite, dark side. What does it look like? Maybe it IS a monster fish? We are scared to death by our own monsters.I would like to dwell on the language used in both poems and how it works toward a certain effect. What correlates with the range of mountains of a mirror in Plaths poem is the use of ocula r language without any occurrence of audible one. lyric like darkness, pink with speckles, faces, luster etc. create a ocular picture. The opposition between the pink wall and the darkness is crucial to the poem. Black water has been always associated with hidden, subconscious, uncontrollable forces indoors a personality. Hence, I can say that Plaths mirror is not a average between internal and external world, like Alegrias one. It seems to be located inside the human soul itself.While in Plaths poem the attention is drawn to the visual aspect, in Alegrias one the emphasis, tho strange it may seem, is on the physical aspect, on taction. Or rather it is on the ability or inability to perceive the world through touching it. That is why visual pictures, which take enough spot of the poem, are deliberately detached and serve to stress the absence of the woman/mirrors feeling behind them. The opposition is reflect vs. hurt That is why the rule mood is the feeling of stifled pain. This context of use is suggested by the choice of words prick, pinch anguished, frightened, weeping, bleeding, stumbling, panic etc. On the otherpole of the opposition are words like phantom, fleshless, vague.The poems inside plot is a transition from being a woman looking at her reflection into the mirror itself. Lets read this portrayal at the sourceI pinch myself in the subdivisionI dont feelfrightened I look at myself in the mirrorshe also pricks herselfI begin to get dressedstumblingfrom the cornersshouts like lightning boltstortured eyesscurrying ratsand teeth shoot offalthough I feel nothingHere is the starting point of this transition. Frightened by her lost ability to feel, she looks at herself in the mirror and sees a woman with tortured eyes and teeth shoot forth but she feels nothing because she turned into a mirror. This mirror woman leaves home and wanders through the streets reflecting horrible pictures of war. She hurts herself physically to turn back into a l iving person again but another terrifying context prevents her from doing so and she is a fleshless phantom again.The same transition can be sight in Sylvia Plaths poem, although it is proceeds fit to a slightly different pattern. The woman is not replaced by a mirror but she is swallowed by it. Being swallowed, she acquires the attributes of the object, which swallowed her. But two mirrors go on brisk simultaneously- a still and eternal one and a moving mortal one. As I said before, it is running river reflected in a lake.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 womanRises toward her day later day, like a terrible fish.This passage suggests how a recurrent action of universal life is correlated with transcendental eternity.The two poems share the ambivalence of the symbol of mirror. Let us turn to what William Freedman writes just about the concept of the poem. In this poem, the mirror is in effect looking into itself, for the image in the mirror is woman, the object that is itself more mirror than person. A woman will see herself both in and as a mirror. To look into the glass is to look for oneself inside or as reflected on the surface of the mirror and to seek or image oneself in the person (or non-person) of the mirror the poem becomes a mirror not of the world, but of other mirrors and of the process of mirroring. When living mirrors heed into mirrors, as when language stares only at itself,only mirrors and mirroring will be visible The verbaliser sees herself in the mirror in two senses She is the fearful image in the depths beyond the glass and she is the mirror itself ( Freedman1993).BibliographyLye, John. 1996. Critical narration a Guide https//brocku.ca/english/jlye/criticalreading.phpMcManus,Barbara.1998. Readings and Assignments. http//www.cnr.edu/bmcmanus