"Mirror"
1. Why is the title singular?
2. How is a mirror like God?
3. Relating your answer to this poem, a) Comment on the eye of a fish or b) on the memory span of a fish. (Or you may inter-relate both a & b for bonus points.)
"Mushrooms"
4. Why is the title plural?
5. Explain any specific detail of the extended analogy.
6. Both the Bible and the poem agree that "… the meek … shall inherit the earth." (Hint: "earth") According to each source, who will inherit the world?
7. Why is it appropriate for a person who was going through what she was going through to end her poem with an ironic twist on the wisdom of the Bible?
Sylvia Plath herself
8. Miss Plath shared a confusion with F. Scott Fitzgerald about how to view and deal with the world. How should the mirror have helped her to solve her problem with fantasy vs. reality?
9. It can be said that there are basically two types of people who end their own lives. The reason for the one group may at first seem obvious to us. Sylvia Plath seems to belong to the other group, whose suicide seems more inexplicable. Why did she commit suicide?
10. How was the way that she committed suicide appropriately symbolic for a person like her?