Kaila Holly 10-8-09 Sylvia Plath Mirror Blackberrying

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I. Introduction a. Thesis Statement: Plaths use of imagery and personification in Mirror and Blackberrying establish and affect the theme that everyone must go on a journey in life to find their true selves. II. Themes a. Main idea: Plath uses her poems Mirror and Blackberrying to describe how she feels about lifes journey and finding yourself. b. Mirror i. A woman bends over me, searching my reaches for what she really is (ln 10-11). ii. In me she drowned a young girl, and in me a old woman Rises toward her day after day (ln 17-18). iii. The womans quest for self-discovery is genuine (Napierkowski 118). c. Blackberrying i.Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks (ln 10). ii. The face is orange rock, That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space, Of white and pewter lights and a din like silversmiths Beating and beating at an intractable metal (ln 25-28). iii. The hooks in the poem, on one level part of the literal shape of the alley, can be read as events that change the direction of ones journey through life (Hacht, 32). III. Literary Devices a. Main Idea: In order for Plath to effectively establish and maintain her theme, she uses imagery and personification within her poetry. b. Imagery i. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness (Mirror ,16). ii.The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within (Blackberrying, 15). iii.She draws us in by starting off with more general description of her environment and then narrowing her aim, as if she is snapping photographs( Semansky, 34). c. Personification i. I am silver and exact, I have no preconceptions. Whatever you see I swallow immediately (Mirror, 1-2). ii.A bush of flies, hanging their blue-green bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen. The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them: they believe in heaven (Blackberrying, 16-18). iii.Plath uses the technique of personification to give an inanimate object-In this case a glass mirror-the human capacity for speech (Johnson, 121). IV. Compare and Contrast a. Main Idea: The imagery used within both Mirror and Blackberrying suggest a wonderful life that is full of sadness, the personification used modifies the theme of a life. i. Imagery 1.Faces and darkness separate of over and over (Mirror, 9). 2.One more hook, and the bushed and the berries end (Blackberrying, 19).

3.It is through the clever use of the words the writer invites the reader to experience routine images in new ways (Mowery, 36). ii. Personification 1.She turns to those liars, the candles or the moon (Mirror, 12). 2.A sudden wind funnels at me, Slapping its phantom laundry in my face (Blackberrying, 21-22). 3She is the personification-or reflection (Freedman, 124). V. Conclusion a. Main Idea: Plath effectively uses imagery to abstractly comparing life and death, while also using personification to give a objects human thoughts and actions.