Preview

Alice Walker's Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is The Self

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
633 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Alice Walker's Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is The Self
The essay,” Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” by Alice Walker is about self-realization, and that world is about the choices we make, as well as what we make it to be. The essay takes us from the external world where looks are everything, to the internal world, where looks are only a part of her real self.

At the age of two and a half, Alice Walker shows that she is very confident in her beauty, when she wants to go to the fair with her father, and she says to him, “Take me daddy. I’m the prettiest”. She also shows that she is not only completely aware of her looks, but that she is very confident of her abilities, Easter Sunday,1950.On that particular morning, she felt that “everyone was admiring her beautiful dress”, Alice also states “that it is not her dress they admire ,but it is her spirit they adored”.
…show more content…
The incident leaves a cute and very bright and outgoing girl, with a destroyed sense of self beauty. She no longer sees that she’s bright, or that she has a charming personality, all she now sees is the disfigurement to her eye. Where she was doing well in school, she is now doing poorly. Her peers make her feel ashamed when they ask “what is wrong with your eye”. She then becomes “the girl who does not raise her head. She does not pray for sight, instead she prays for

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    A passage from the book showing her bravery is read: Mary struck out, stamping on the man’s instep, using her elbows as weapons, twisting hard and fast out of his grasp. Hid face loomed indistinctly in the gray mist, and she attacked again, landing a hard punch on his nose. This passage is detecting her bravery when she is beating up the man who harassing her. If there was anyone else on her spot, she would simply ran away.…

    • 79 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker, the author of “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self”, describes to us a point in time in which an “accident” distorted her perception of her beauty. Growing up Walker would receive comments such as “isn’t she the cutest thing”, she believed she was beautiful. After she was involved in a BB gun incident her eye was injured, everything changed, she let this small flaw affect the way she viewed herself. She was blinded, she believed this incident had changed her, but in reality everyone saw her the same “You did not change…” they would tell her. Walker eventually had a daughter, Rebecca, she allowed her other to open her eyes, to accept that she was still beautiful. There is a popular phrase that states “beauty is in the eyes…

    • 354 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Initially, you get the impression of Celie as a shadow in the background- the kind of person that you wouldn’t notice even if she was right in front of you. She was utterly silent in her life, never getting in anyone’s way or saying what was on her mind; until she discovered the healing power of writing a series of letters, addressed to God first, and then her sister. Through her writing, she discovers her true nature and the woman that she was supposed to be in her own life.…

    • 943 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Walker uses the accident that happens during her childhood to prove that one’s mindset can be altered because of a profound experience and how her attitude completely transforms from a conceited and arrogant child into a newly reborn woman who sees a new kind of beauty within her life. She uses different points of her life to build on this idea in separate clear stages. She begins the story with a very conceited outlook on life where she knows she’s beautiful. “I’m the prettiest!”, a young Walker decrees, as she abuses her beauty for her father’s consent. This attitude is further encouraged by the society of which she is a product. She is always used to hearing praise from people such as “Oh, isn’t she the cutest thing!”. In a culture like this, Walker begins shaping into a commodity more than an actual person. Walker herself even views her younger form with disdain because of this snobbish attitude, because she…

    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker Heritage

    • 951 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Through contrasting family members and views in "Everyday Use", Alice Walker illustrates the importance of understanding our present life in relation to the traditions of our own people and culture. Using careful descriptions and attitudes, Walker demonstrates which factors contribute to the values of one's heritage and culture; she illustrates that these are represented not by the possession of objects or mere appearances, but by one's lifestyle and attitude. In "Everyday Use" Walker personifies the different sides of culture and heritage in the characters of Dee and the mother (the narrator). Dee can be seen to represent a materialistic, complex, and modern way of life where culture and heritage are to be valued only for…

    • 951 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be temporarily blind and have to wear a certain type of glasses for the rest of your life? In that case you have come to the right place because this book we read called tangerine has many ups and downs but is a phenomenal book. This book takes you on a journey throughout the life of a kid name paul’s life, but as it may seem, it is hard for him in this world for many reasons, but there’s one that stands out above the rest. Paul is temporarily blind, now I know you guys may say “wow,I feel so bad, but how?”. Well, I would not insist on spoiling this part, but the reason why is because he looked at a solar eclipse and it affected his sight for the rest of his life. He has gone through school being bullied,…

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    RHETORICAL

    • 381 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This story puts forth automatically that it’s going to be something about “Beauty” and “Perspective” just by looking back at the title of it you can tell right away. To relate back to what I stated above, in the first paragraph, Alice refers back to her childhood and talking about her father, “My father, a fat, funny man with beautiful eyes and a subversive wit…” (Walker). Alice also refers back to past life, talking about her parents, her home life, and her brothers; “I am eight years old and a tomboy” (Walker).…

    • 381 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker's Culture

    • 146 Words
    • 1 Page

    In the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker the author explains Maggie and Dee’s views on the world and culture. The way people view Maggie and Dee’s lifestyle is how they can interpret their outlook on culture. Maggie says “I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day.”(Walker 59) She is referring to the clothes she wears as a part of her daily lifestyle. I can relate to that by the school clothes I wear five days a week, six hours a day as a part of my daily recurrence. Dee on the other hand dresses differently than Maggie. “A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school.” (Walker 60) This text shows that Dee is more dressy than Maggie. One way we can view Maggie and Dee’s culture is that Dee is more…

    • 146 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walkersjourney

    • 549 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the collection of stories, “In Search of our Mother’s Gardens,” Alice Walker, has one related to Flannery O’Connor. In Alice Walker’s, “Beyond the Peacock,” she journeys back to her hometown on a mission for wholeness. She experiences this walk through memory lane with her own mother.…

    • 549 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    We are sometimes known as our own worst critic and after reading Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” and Tennessee Williams’ play “The Glass Menagerie”, we experience two characters that display this to be true. In “Everyday Use” we are introduced to Maggie, the timid and homely little sister who has burns throughout her arms and legs due to a house fire which occurred many years prior to when the story takes place. In “The Glass Menagerie” we read about Laura, an introverted character who suffers from a childhood illness causing her to have one leg shorter than the other leaving her to rely on the use of a brace. Throughout both pieces of literature we learn that both young ladies are being held down by their physical defects, which is all fault to their own. Although both Maggie from “Everyday Use” and Laura from “The Glass Menagerie” are from two completely different backgrounds, both share low self-esteem caused by their physical defects.…

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After reading the four essays assigned to this sequence, it becomes interesting to contrast two author's points of view on the same subject. Reading one professional writer's rewriting of a portion of another professional writer's essay brings out many of each of their characteristics and views. Also, the difference in writing styles could be drastic, or slight. Nevertheless, the writers display how versatile the English language can be. Alice Walker was born in 1944 as a farm girl in Georgia.…

    • 1357 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker "Beauty"

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In Alice Walker’s “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self,” we are introduced to a self-confident, charismatic child. Through, “Im the prettiest!” and “It was great fun being cute” we sense a wave of pride as Walker describes herself as a child. (Walker, 47,48) However, this joy soon comes to an end as Walker is faced with an “accident.” Unfortunately, she is shot with a BB gun and is scarred and blinded in her right eye. Walker suffers throughout the story, struggling to deal with the loss of her physical and inner beauty. However, through experiences along the way she comes to realize she does not have a “deformity,” but a world in her eye teaching herself and the reader the real meaning of beauty.…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker Biography

    • 354 Words
    • 2 Pages

    When alice was eight she was accidentally shot in the right eye by a BB gun one of her brothers had owned. Because no one in the family had a car Walker couldn't see a for a week but by then her eye had already scarred over leave a white scar over her eye, which made her very self-conscious and shy, thinking that she was disfigured. But, due to her being more self involved she began writing, something that she began to enjoy very much.…

    • 354 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Today, people have seen loads of advertisement of beauty and ways young girls can attract men. The closer someone looks it is ironic how most people say everyone is beautiful in their own way. Meanwhile, the people in articles are influencing young teens and adults to look a certain way. The audience needs to acknowledge the problem with not only with race but also gender influenced in beauty standards. The Author Alice Walker passage, Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self, expresses her feelings of growing up as an accident disfigures her eye which led her to believe she wasn't beautiful. The accident changed her from a cute, outgoing young girl into a vulnerable girl. Walker felt mortified and self-destructed herself because of the damage…

    • 1266 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Beauty Definition Essay

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages

    When you look in the mirror, do you see “beautiful”? Did you know that there’s a kind of beauty that isn’t tangible? Beauty is more than one might think; it is more rare. Those who have seen it know it to be something that cannot be captured by a photograph, it must be told by a story. If it has not been clear yet, beauty is not by any means physical aesthetics, but rather it is the actions that make-up an appealing disposition. Through the centuries, so many have wrongly credited beauty to be a person’s looks. The inevitable problem with that kind of beauty is the ever changing idea of what it is, and how it fails to express true beauty.…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics