55 pages • 1 hour read
Anna Deavere SmithFires In The Mirror
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act II: “Mirrors”
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Act II, Scene 1 Summary: Aaron M. Bernstein, “Mirrors and Distortions”
The interview takes place on a Cambridge evening. Bernstein talks about a mirror reflecting light and substance: “it’s a piece of glass which is silvered on the back” (13). He speaks of distortions, like a young woman in literature who looks into a mirror and thinks she’s a witch because she’s evil. Bernstein says that physicists talk about distortion, using large gatherings of light to make telescopes, for example. If there are errors in the construction, it distorts the images of stars, and thus, one wants to make the telescope as large as possible.
Act II Analysis
This act, which consists of a single scene, is nonetheless vital to the play itself. This discussion of science and literature conflates the scientific—or the real, as many would argue—with the literary, which is subject to interpretation and experience. In this way, Smith uses the metaphor of the mirror as a way to bring to light the reality of these experiences, demonstrating that no matter the subjectivity of the experience—the distortion—the experience is still very much real. Smith believes that her art—this play—acts as a mirror for society in reflecting the experience of events surrounding the Crown Heights incidents. Just as scientists need to make the
