Mirror and Warning

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Mirror and Warning

The central theme of both the poems is old age. Sylvia Plath and Jenny Joseph express their ideas of old age through the poems 'Mirror' and 'Warning'. The intention of Sylvia Plath and Jenny Joseph are different. The message they want to get through to us differs. Jenny Joseph gearing us up towards old age through Warning and Sylvia Plath making old age sound terrible in Mirror.

In the poem mirror, Sylvia Plath uses a lot of dull and negative words making old age sound terrifying "darkness" "drowned" and "terrible". "Then she turns to those liars, the candles the moon" in this sentence she refers to the candle or the moon being a liar putting a negative image. Where as candles and moons are know to be a source of light making it positive. However the poem is very complicated to understand because it has a lot of hidden meanings. She use a lot of vivid language and personification meaning bringing lifeless object to life, for example when she says " Now I'm a lake" first line second paragraph. The lady also portrays her life to be like a non-living thing mirror, lake. This is because she describes her life to be less objective comparison to Warning. Here Jenny Joseph describes the lady to be quite cheerful, happy, and looking forward to old age. There is a rhythmic pattern in Warning. The repetition of the word 'and' and ' I shall' goes on through out the whole poem. The word and suggest Jenny Joseph is writing while she's thinking, as she goes along perhaps. This is telling the readers she is looking forward to her future and old age. Warning uses a lot of humour to portray and give a happy image "You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat".
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The first paragraph is describing herself; we know this by the repetition of "I". Second paragraph is written in a second person singular the word "you" to make the reader feel more involved and part of the poem. In the third paragraph she start of with " But now we must..." this indicates that one day everybody must get old so we might as well start to practise and look forward to it. Also in the third paragraph she describes her present life to be very organised, containing a way of life, here she also uses the word ...

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