Faces Sara Teasdale Summary

"Faces", by Sara Teasdale, revolves around how a person perceives others when merely presented with one's face. Within the author's perspective, she regrets the judgments she immediately created of another person while worrying if others impose the same treatment on her. Teasdale incorporates metaphors, personifications, and end rhymes to convey her readers that people are too quick to internally condemn others.

First of all, the usage of metaphors communicates the ludicrousness of people's negative evaluation of another's face. For example, Teasdale writes "your poor disguise" to compare the "poor disguise" to one's facial features. This correlation is meant to show that she truly believes this person's face to be unattractive. There is nothing morally incorrect to deem someone unattractive.

However, she realizes that her detrimental perception of this person's outer looks also causes her to think cynically about the person's unknown personality. The author devastatingly apologizes for neglecting the inner beauty that may dwell within the person; henceforth, she includes the metaphor "poor disguise" within her poem.
Secondly, to educate the readers on misconceptions, Teasdale deliberately inserts personifications.

For instance, as the author consciously evaluates someone's face, she injects the phrase "secrets rushing without sound". This symbolizes the judgments that people create in their own mind from the instance they present themselves with one's physical appearance. In human nature, people do not immediately voice their opinions to the one they evaluate; consequently, since humans often keep their guilty judgment to themselves, the author imagines these criticisms as "secrets". Also, these secrets, as the writer phrases it to the one who she castigates, are "crying from your hiding places". There is no doubt that nearly everybody has something they desire to tweak from their outward appearance; consequently, they are self-conscious about it, and they make the effort to hide it. When a person notices their equivalent flaw, they devastatingly feel as if their own private place was invaded. Figuratively, these secrets that the author uncovered are shocked with grief by the unexpected invasion, and they are chastised. These secrets non-interchangeably become flaws and

criticisms.
Lastly, end rhymes are placed within the poem to emphasize certain words that shed light on the topic of people's instantaneous judgment. To make an illustration, the last words in the second and fourth stanza are "roar" and "before". These two words connect because they describe how on any average day humans have a tendency to misjudge someone by their looks even if they will most likely never see each other again. Similarly, the final words of the sixth and eighth stanzas are "eyes" and "disguise". By rendering these two words more noticeable, it is much simpler to understand the author's disgust of immediately assuming that the outer beauty she witnesses reflects the inner beauty of the same individual. Finally, the fourteenth and sixteenth stanza consists of the end rhymes "be" and "me". "Be" and "me" expresses the fright that the author develops when she realizes the possibility of people critically analyzing herself.
In conclusion, the creator of "Faces" declares others to avoid shaming others in the way they present themselves through metaphors, personifications, and end rhymes. Many people struggle with the absurdity of distinguishing and ostracizing others merely by their facial features. Everybody has the right to come to conclusions about people's exterior make-up. However, people must be familiar with an individual's personality to truly decide whether it is pleasant to be around him.