Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell

    Through the use of dual perspectives, Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now shifts from naïve and hopeful about life and love to being experienced but disillusioned by them in order to suggest that "something's lost and something's gained in living every day."  Mitchell uses the example in the third stanza that she has lost friends on her way to figuring out life and love. She was able to gain some insight on what love actually is, yet she lost friends on her way there. The way she suggests that something is gained and lost in the circle of life is through imagery and different stages of her life. All throughout she speaks of not knowing what life is to not knowing what love is and still not knowing despite the fact that she has had many experiences. I, personally, can relate this to my own life because when she sings about looking at life from both sides, although I haven’t really lived very long I can see the vast difference in my views from when I was a little kid. What I relate to in the song is when she goes from being a child to being a young adult I can feel the way she is describing. The imagery she uses to describe herself as a child amplifies the reality of the song. Every human goes through different stages of life. Mitchell takes her audience through the stages by using imaginative examples. By using the motif of looking at things from both sides, at least in my opinion, means that as she grew up her views on certain topics have changed. She goes from childhood thinking that all the world is just ice cream castles and like a fairy tale, to slowly realizing that the world is more abstract than she once had thought as a young child.