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

When Alice Walker was eight years old, her brother accidentally shot her with a BB gun in her right eye. She lost the use of that eye and was left with scar tissue that was noticeable. Other kids would ridicule and laugh at her. This caused her to become very withdrawn. She became more of an observer and she started composing poetry in her head. She was afraid to put them on paper because she thought that her siblings would find her writings and tear them up.

Some may confine to societies expectations, rebel, or even enforce them; however, Alice Walker “dances” over the categories that society has believed she should be placed in to find something more meaningful and significant about herself. Alice Walker, known for her numerous awards and 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning work, The Color Purple, is an American novelist, poet, and activist. Her essay, Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self, is an autobiographical account of an incident that caused her to go blind in one eye when she was eight years old. Walker’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions, which were cultivated by the standards and pressures of society, are described in her story. While some may overlook its purpose, the metaphor of dance is significant because it represents her individual liberation of societal standards and categorization, which in turn influences readers to consider their oppressors and realize their self-worth.

Alice Walkers "Roselily" is a short story about a woman who is about to be married, but is having second thoughts about the marriage. She is also looking into the past and the future trying to make sense of what is happening. Roselily is being torn between choosing between her current or possible future Economic status, Societies view of her, her religion and her freedom. All these thoughts go through her mind as the wedding ceremony takes place, and she begins to wonder if she has made the right choice is marrying this man.

In “Beauty: When the Other Dance Is the Self”, Alice is forced to lie for her siblings in order to protect them and herself. Alice must lie to protect herself because her two brothers will hurt her because she told on them causing them to be in trouble. Next, I will discuss the quickly changing events that cause Alice to lose sight in one of her eyes. At the age of eight, Alice is a tomboy, where she oftenly hangs out with her brothers. The parents of Alice and her

Almost everyone in the world feels a need to belong. When searching for one’s own identity, the questions of where power lies and who disperses it derive. The choices to separate, conform and individualize play the most significant role in identity because those choices refer individuals to the people they associate with. Deirdre N. McCloskey’s “Yes, Ma’am” and Alice Walker’s “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” relate in finding an identity and self-accepting oneself.

In Alice Walker's "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self”, her view of beauty changes through different stages of her life. In her childhood Walker has a misunderstanding of beauty. She is concerned with superficial signs of beauty and fails to appreciate her inner beauty. A tragic mishap as a young child leaves her right eye blind and deformed. She enters a period of depression her life, living her life in shame and disappointment because she believes her beauty to be lost. Even getting surgery as an adult doesn’t help defeat her demons. She continues to struggle until she finds her inner beauty through her daughter’s love. As a child, Alice Walker got her definition of beauty from her family, in her teens she turned to her peers to define beauty, her perception finally changed again in adulthood when she discovered an inner beauty.

Walkers essay is great of getting her audience to reminisce on the past by describing some childhood memories of life on the farm with the use of her beautiful language to share an image in Walkers memory.

Two-year-old Alice Walker was as boastful and energetic as they come. She was a product of her environment;

A person’s perception of anything is always influenced by their experiences. Alice Walker, the writer of “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self”, is no different in regards to her perception of beauty. Walker uses various stylistic elements throughout her writing to convey her shifting outlook toward her own beauty. She also employs various rhetorical strategies in order to deliver a clear and luring story that keeps the reader engaged as she describes her life as a flashback. 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

During the civil rights movement many women and minorities were suppressed from being able to be true to themselves and what they believe in. Civil rights advocate and “womanist”, Alice Walker, in her poems, “Burial,” “Be Nobody’s Darling,” and “While Love is Unfashionable,” analyzes the importance of breaking away from the stereotypes set by society in efforts to prevent struggle. Walker uses a variety of parallelism, allusions, and metaphors to persuade readers to break free from the crowd and embrace the outcast found within the truest version of oneself.

     Alice Walker is an African American essayist, novelist and poet. She is described as a “black feminist.”(Ten on Ten) Alice Walker tries to incorporate the concepts of her heritage that are absent into her essays; such things as how women should be independent and find their special talent or art to make their life better. Throughout Walker’s essay entitled “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” I determined there were three factors that aided Walker gain the concepts of her heritage which are through artistic ability, her foremothers and artistic models.

A form of adversity is in Alice Walker’s essay, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self”, it shows how a person’s perception of everything is always greatly influenced by their past experiences. Walker uses various elements throughout her writing to show her outlook towards her appearance. Walker uses the incident that happened in her childhood to show that a persons mindset can be changed by a experience and how her attitudes changes from a sassy, conceited kid to a matured and powerful women who finally sees beauty in her life. Alice Walker’s essay is a great example of a person whose fear of adversity allowed themselves to be worn down by it. She begins the story with a cocky outlook on life where she knows she is beautiful. “I’m the prettiest!” (Alice Walker), as a young child she would use her

Alice Walker's short fictional story, "Nineteen Fifty-five", revolves around the encounters among Gracie Mae Still, the narrator, and Traynor, the "Emperor of Rock and Roll." Traynor as a young prospective singer purchases a song from Mrs. Still, which becomes his "first hit record" and makes him rich and famous. Yet, he does not "even understand" the song and spends his entire life trying to figure out "what the song means." The song he sings seems as fictional as certain events in this story, but as historical as Traynor's based character, Elvis Presley.

The emotional focus of Alice Walker's story is rage, red-hot and isolating.  As I read this piece, I became livid, not only at the thought of her devastating

Alice Walker uses irony and surrealism to bring out the racial prejudice her character had towards the old woman. The writer asserts that some of the congregation spoke unkindly of her, words not suit for people who believe in a God who is all loving. Some of them felt pity for her, as if they somehow knew what was coming for her by going to that church. Some of the Christians were just hypocritical and choose not to say anything, "held their pious peace". Some saw her advance age and the confusion that comes with it, her missing buttons on her blouse showed age and also poverty, that it was a best outfit to go out to church with, yet it hard missing buttons. Some of the