1. The personified mirror in Plath’s poem calls candles and the moon “liars.” What connotative information on the two might help explain this disparaging tone of the mirror?
The mirror acts as if it chooses to reflect everything that it sees. It has no choice but to reflect what it sees, and the face that it claims that it does it willingly, that it is so great and that it sees everything the way that it is elevates it above the moon and candles. The demeaning of the moon could be because of the fact that it does not give off its own light but rather reflects, much like the mirror, which in turn shows the deception or ignorance of the mirror altogether. The candle only gives off light if it is helped to become on fire, it does not emit light just by being a candle, but it requires a flame to become a source of light. The mirror is much like the candle, too. The mirror absolutely requires a light source to be able to "see" anything. In its personification it is able to have a disparaging tone toward the moon and candle because the candle and moon are not given a voice, but if they did have one, they would agree that the real liar is indeed the mirror. The mirror says that it is important to the woman, but who's to say that the candle is not the most important to her because it gives off the light so that the mirror can reflect her form, or the moon that it provides a soft, natural light?
2. Consider the metaphors and their associated verbs “meditate” and “reflect” that the human-like mirror uses to describe itself. Do you think this is the same kind of meditation and reflection that the woman does when she “bends over” the mirror and rewards it “with tears and an agitation of hands”?
No, the mirror's meditate is restricted by the amount of light that it is presented with, it has no more depth or object to ponder on if it is not allowed to see it with available light or if it is not contained between the four corners it boasts about. The woman can engage in thoughts, engage in contemplation to achieve a higher standing in terms of her spiritual awareness, therefore grasping things that are not visible to her, whether in her physical sight or contained within her own mind. Reflection takes on a primitive meaning in the context of the mirror, it can only throw back light, it can only manifest within its four corners what it is again allowed to by the presence of light. The woman is able to, in terms of reflection, think quietly and express a thought or outline something that she has experienced even when it is not tangibly in her presence. The mirror may meditate on the woman only as light would allow, and can only reflect the superficial truth of her. Respectively, the woman can meditate on deep things that are hidden from the mirror's eye, and reflect on things that require no light, things that are of though and of concern that only true humans possess, not something that a stuck up mirror thinks that it "knows" by "seeing."
3. How is the gustatory image of the mirror “swallowing” everything it sees at the beginning related to the visual one of the drowned young girl and the simile at the end of the poem?
What the girl sees is held within the mirror, nothing that she does not possess is present in her reflection, the reflection is just as she is, what she looks like. The mirror "swallowing" her could be linked to the visual image of the mirror drowning the young girl but viewing the girl, or woman, over a long period of time and not a single instance in which this mirror is speaking. The mirror is most likely noting how it is present throughout the girl's life, swallowing the fragments and pieces that it sees of her, drowning her slowly, making her older, drowning her youth if you will. Her youth waning is clearly expresses while continuing the visual image of the lake by describing her as a terrible fish, growing older and soggier as the days go by.
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