Themes of Miracle Polish

Miracle Polish is a story about a man who buys a bottle of “Miracle Polish” from a salesman who goes from house to house. From the moment the narrator begins using the Miracle Polish to clean one of the few mirrors in his house, his obsession for his own reflection – and his girlfriend Monica’s – led him to buying more mirrors. This goes on up to the point when Monica gets fed up with the narrator, for he is more appealed to the Monica in the mirror rather than the real Monica. The narrator then insists that he wants the real Monica, up to the point that he pours away the Miracle Polish in the sink and destroys all the mirrors in his house. Unfortunately, Monica leaves him and he hopes the salesman will come back to sell him more Miracle Polish. The perspective of this story is first person narrative, and the narrator of this story is not given a name. Because of the lack of a name, therefore the narrator is open to be anyone.

The themes of this short story include jealousy, obsession with narcissism and the emergence of another identity. In this short story, jealousy is displayed when Monica has the narrator choose between the real her and the Monica in the mirror. In the story, “Once, she said, “You know, sometimes I think you like me better there”—she pointed to a mirror—“than here”—she pointed to herself. She said it teasingly, with a little laugh, but in her look was an anxious question.” The Monica in the mirror was described in this excerpt: “a fresh Monica, a vibrant Monica, a Monica with a glow of pleasure in her face. She was dressed in clothes that no longer seemed a little drab, a little elderly, but were handsomely understated, seductively restrained.” The real Monica is depicted in the excerpt “Not for a moment did the mirror make her look young, or beautiful, for she was not young and she was not beautiful. But it was as if some inner constriction had dissolved, some sense of her drifting gradually into unhappiness.” Jealousy is what drove the