Question

In at least 150 words, explain how the tone of Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” is affected by the poet’s precise word choice. Provide specific evidence from the text to support your response.

Answer 1

In this poem, a mirror describes its existence and its owner, who grows older as the mirror watches. The mirror first describes itself as “silver and exact.” It forms no judgments, instead merely swallowing what it sees and reflecting that image back without any alteration. The mirror is not cruel, “only truthful.”

Answer 2

Tone is the musical or vocal sound with reference to its pitch, quality, and strength. Sylvia's precise word choice has a major impact in the overall tone of the poem. Her word choice makes the poem have a serious, objective and detached tone. The short precise statements create a feeling of despair and loneliness. The mirror as described in the poem, has gone to favor the "pink wall with speckles" and seems to be resentful towards the faces of the "dark" nights. The tone of this poem is obvious and not hidden like it is in many poems, which makes this poem great.The mirror is not cruel, “only truthful", which creates a peaceful tone. It considers itself a four-cornered eye of a god, which sees everything for what it is. Most of the time, the mirror looks across the empty room and meditates on the pink speckled wall across from it. Another tone setting example in the poem is “part of my heart.” The image of the wall is interrupted only by people who enter to look at themselves and the darkness that comes with night. In at least one hundred words, identify the purpose of Betty Friedan’s “The Problem that Has No Name” and explain how the author’s word choice in the text helps to accomplish that purposeThe purpose of writing “The Problem that Has No Name” was to express how the idea of the common housewife was back in that time.