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

The short story/essay “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self” written by Alice Walker demonstrates the story of Alice accepting herself despite her flaws. As a child, Alice is a pretty, outgoing, and messy girl; but that all changes in a matter of seconds. Alice loses sight in one of her eyes, changing her perspective on life for a majority of her life. She went from the outgoing girl whom everybody seems to love, to the girl that doesn’t look up anymore in fear people will see her messed up eye. Growing up in 1947 with her family, she is not a rich child, in fact, almost dirt poor, so her parents can’t afford a car to take her to the hospital, contributing to her losing sight in her eye. Although she tells her parents a reason causing her to injure her eye, it is a lie, so that she is able to protect her siblings from becoming in trouble. Alice Walker demonstrates a theme of lying to protect siblings in her life which I can relate to because I oftenly as a child had to lie to protect my siblings as well.

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.

My paper literary artist Alice walker and visual artist Van Goth are best artist in the world, they have many similar things and different things, they are come from different century, different country, they have different family background, they have different work and life. People have different views on them. They both well know and both have a lot of fans in the world. Compared their difference and similar, life and work. We could links the two lives and their work together.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

“The Flowers” by Alice Walker is a short story written in the 1970’s. The story focuses on Myop, a ten year old African American girl who loves to explore the land in which she lives. Carefree and naïve, Myop decides to travel further away from her ‘Sharecropper cabin’ and travels deep inside the woods to unfamiliar land where she discovers the decomposed body of an African American man. It is then Myop quickly grows up and suddenly becomes aware of the world in which she lives. The story relies on setting and symbolism to convey the theme of departing innocence.

Heritage, a lot of people see it as being only the past, with no significance to their everyday lives whatsoever, others see it as merely objects and money passed down from older generations to their younger generations, but really heritage means much more than that. Ones heritage is the lessons learned from elders and passed down to their children and grandchildren to help them not make the same mistakes they made before, heritage is the roots that makes a person who they are. The world without recollection of its’s heritage, is a world without progress, a world that only stands still waiting for the same missteps to cycle back around. A person with no knowledge of their heritage is a person with no knowledge of themselves, and not knowing one 's self can lead to mishaps directing that individual down a path they would otherwise be able to avoid with a keen understanding of where they originate. Alice Walker and Kate Chopin both touch on the struggles and outcomes of not knowing or taking advantage of one 's heritage through their stories “Everyday Use” and “Desiree’s baby.” In both of the stories, the antagonist Dee/Wangero, and Armand has problems with whom they truly are because of their lack of knowledge and acceptance of who they truly are.

Nowadays children but more so adolescents have a hard time finding who they really are and figuring out there identity In the Short Story “Mirror Image” by Lena Coakley the idea of finding your true self is found in the main character of this Short story Alice. Alice does not think that her identity and her personality are the same. Alice has a hard time trying to figure out who she really is in her new body due to her family not ever letting go or forgetting that she looks different than before, but after Alice meeting with Mr.Jarred she comes to terms that she is the same girl. Firstly, everything on the outside of Alice is a different world to her and others because when Alice first sees herself after having surgery on her new body with only her brain being the same she knows that she no longer looks the same due to her new body and how people treat her differently

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.

To fully understand the meaning behind the way that she learned to be herself one must summarize the story. During the essay, Alice was always the best at what she did in the early years of growing up. She was beautiful and everyone around her knew it, including herself. One day while she was playing with her brothers, and was blasted with an excruciating amount of pain to her right eye. Later to find out her brother shot her with a BB gun. After lying to her parents about the ordeal, they took her to the doctor a week later. He basically told her that their is nothing that he could do, and that their will be a white blog in her eye. After the visit the narrator become down on herself, and starting becoming bad in school. She then later on in life removed the white blob, and became a happy warm hearted person once again.

     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.

When reading Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and “Everyday Use,” it is evident that she writes about her life through her use of allegory. Alice Walker uses the events of her childhood, her observation of the patriarchy in African American culture, and her rebellion against the society she lived in to recount her life through her stories. Alice Walker grew up in a loving household in the years towards the end of the Great Depression. Although her family was poor, they were rich in kindness and perspective and taught Walker a lot about her heritage and life.