MIRROR
THEME
The poem deals with our sense of anxiety when we start showing signs of ageing. Everyone wishes to stay youthful and beautiful all one’s life. However, this being against the law of nature, can never be possible. Hence, we need to develop an inner strength to face all stages of life gracefully.
MESSAGE
The poem conveys the message that rather than living in a world of illusions, we need to change our attitude and learn to face and accept reality without indulging in self-pity.
TITLE
The poem deals with mirror’s exactness, truthfulness and human beings’ relationship with it for years together. The whole poem revolves around the mirror, hence ‘Mirror’ is an appropriate title.
ANNOTATIONS
The eye of a little god: Like god, the mirror sees the truth and views everything in all the corners of the world. By comparing itself to an ‘eye of a god’ , the mirror at once becomes something mystic and divine – something above the ordinary and the worldly.
Searching my reaches: explores the depth of time / goes down memory lane / looks at her own wrinkled face which is her reality now and regrets the loss of her youth / she is reminded of the times she used to admire her beauty in the mirror.
In me ……..a young girl: The woman has been viewing herself in the mirror ever since she was a young girl. That youth and beauty seems to have dissolved in me.
An old woman….rises towards her : every morning the woman comes to the mirror hoping to see her youthful self but gets to see onlyher old wrinkled face.
Read the following extracts and answer the questions that follow.
1. “I am silver and exact . I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful.”
a) In what way is the mirror ‘exact’?
b) What does the poet mean by the expression, ‘I have no preconceptions’?
c) Why has the mirror been described as being ‘unmisted’?
2. “ A woman bends over me
Searching my reaches for what she really is
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon”
a) What is the woman bending over?
b) Why have the candles or moon been called ‘liars’?
c) Why does she turn to them inspite of calling them ‘liars’?
3. “I am not cruel, only truthful
The eye of a little God, four-cornered
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall”
a) Why does the mirror say, ‘I am not cruel’?
b) Why has the mirror been called a ‘four-cornered’ god?
c) How does the mirror spend its time?
2. Short Answer Questions
i) Why is the old woman compared to a terrible fish in the poem, ‘Mirror?’
ii) Why is the mirror like a God and a lake? (CBSE 2011)
iii) Why does the woman not like the Mirror?
iv) What does the poet mean by, ‘She has drowned a young girl’?
3. Long Answer Question
a) The mirror brings out every man’s struggle to break the shackles of vanity and self obsession and accept the truth with dignity. Elaborate
Please click on below link to download CBSE Class 10 English Mirror Worksheet
