Preview

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

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
354 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Alice Walker's Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is The Self
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
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Destructive Use Of Imagery In Alice Walker's Bravery
    • 79 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Destructive Use Of Imagery In Alice Walker's Bravery

    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
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Role Of Dee In Alice Walker's Everyday Use
    • 580 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Role Of Dee In Alice Walker's Everyday Use

    While reading the short story "Everyday Use" written by Alice Walker, shallow and selfish come to mind as the story describes the oldest sister, Dee. Critics will argue on how selfish she really is though. According to Nancy Tuten, author of "Alice Walker's Everyday Use," Dee, the oldest sister, has grown accustom to getting her way and not sure how to act when she is told NO. Where Susan Farrell says in her article, "Fight vs. Flight: A Re-evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker's Everyday use," Dee is not as selfish as most people believe. Susan Farrell still says that Dee is selfish, but to a point, the rest is her view of her heritage and new way of copping with the oppressed society that they live in.…

    • 580 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Uglies By Scott Westerfled
    • 1083 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Uglies By Scott Westerfled

    This book will teach the generations to come that if you want to be beautiful you’ll have to be a whole new person, a photo shopped fake. Today in advertisements and magazines we are presented with beautiful images of men and women, girls and boys. We are presented with fake pictures, imaginary pictures, something that will never happen, but we are totally fooled into believing that true beauty is what’s presented in magazines and advertisements. This book teaches us that our imperfections make us beautiful, that for beauty you lose your people, and you’ll regret it. The imagination of being perfect is told in someone else’s point of view. Our society is proven to believe that a person with a combination of qualities that pleases others is beautiful, but your imperfections are what make you beautiful. As Marilyn Monroe said “Imperfection is beauty. Madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” Tally is taught in The Smoke, that alongside the surgery, “uglies” face tiny complications from the anaesthetic used in the operation, tiny lesions in the brain that were barely visible. These lesions were basically a…

    • 1083 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    An Analysis Of Alice Walker's The Color Purple
    • 943 Words
    • 4 Pages

    An Analysis Of Alice Walker's The Color Purple

    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
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analysis of Alice Walker's "Beauty"
    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Analysis of Alice Walker's "Beauty"

    A person’s perception of anything is always influenced by their experiences. Alice Walker is no different in regards to her perception of beauty. “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is The Self” is an autobiographical story written by Walker that recounts and compares her life before and after her "accident". When she was eight years old, she was shot in the eye by one of her brothers while playing cowboys and Indians with a BB gun. The incident leaves a once cute and outgoing girl with a destroyed sense of self beauty. Walker traces her experiences throughout life as it was changed by her "deformity". Walker uses various elements throughout her writing to convey her ever-changing outlook toward her own beauty. She also makes use of various symbolic strategies in order to deliver a clear and luring story that keeps the reader engaged as she describes her life as a flashback. Alice does a good job making the reader feel like he or she is part of the story. She is able to bring to mind memories that may be long forgotten due to her detailed storytelling.…

    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Alice Walker's Everyday Use: Traditions, Relationships, and Identity
    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Alice Walker's Everyday Use: Traditions, Relationships, and Identity

    Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” talks about traditions, relationships and identity. In this piece by Alice Walker the three characters; Dee, Maggie, and Mama show us the struggles that African Americans during this time went through. Alice Walker's modern classic "Everyday Use" tells the story of a mother and her two daughters' conflicting ideas about their identities and ancestry. The mother, Mama narrates the story of when one of her daughter Dee, visits from college and clashes with the other daughter, Maggie, over the possession of some heirloom quilts. In addition, the three characters represent the different aspects of their culture. Each character has a different personality. Dee is very outgoing and educated whereas Maggie and Mama are not educated. In “Everyday Use” Mama's thoughts about her daughters are expressed through the fire that took place. Mama expresses how she feels each daughter is towards her and in the short story you can see how she treats each daughter.…

    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Ap Language and Composition Beauty whenthe other dancer is self
    • 273 Words
    • 1 Page

    Ap Language and Composition Beauty whenthe other dancer is self

    By Writing Beauty:When the other dancer is the self Alice Walker gives us a very vivid snapshot of how her life was affected by a childhood injury that left her blind in one eye. In the beginning of the story she describes herself as a snobbish child who abuses the facts that she is beautiful. “Take me Daddy,I say with assurance; “I’m the prettiest!”(Walker 657) After the incident she feels very insecure about herself But by the end of the story she’s back to the same “i'm pretty” mentality she had when she was a little girl. “ That night I dream I am dancing to Stevie Wonder’s song “ Always (the name of the song is really “As”, but I hear it as “Always”). As I dance, whirling and joyous, happier than I’ve ever been in my life, another bright faced dancer joins me. We dance and kiss each other and hold each other through the night. The other has obviously come through all right, as I have done. She is beautiful,whole and free. And she is also me.”(Walker 663) The Image of the two dancers resolves the essay and is the true resolution for walker because she says when she is dancing she is happier than she's ever been in her whole life and describes the other dancer as beautiful, whole and free. When she says the other dancer is also her we have no choice but to assume that she has found the beauty in herself and is no longer self conscious or feels the need to keep her head down because she is beautiful.…

    • 273 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker Biography
    • 354 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Alice Walker Biography

    Alice Walker was born on February ninth 1944, the youngest of eight children raised by Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant. As a child Alice's parents worked hard, her mother worked for eleven hours for $17 per week. When walker was young her mother defended her kids from working in other peoples fields by saying "You might have some black children somewhere, but they don’t live in this house. Don’t you ever come around here again talking about how my children don’t need to learn how to read and write." Minnie enrolled alice in first grade when she was four.…

    • 354 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker, the Welcome Table
    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Alice Walker, the Welcome Table

    Alice Walker who wrote “The Welcome Table” had issues of race and gender that was the center of her literary work and her social activism. She participated in civil rights demonstrations. (Clugston 2010). This short story has a theme of life and death. It shows the plot of the story, the point of view and has symbolism used to show the death of the old woman and what the church members thought of her as a black woman. (Clugston, 2010, Section 7.1 and 7.2) Later in the story, she is walking up the road with Jesus, who came to get her and take her to The Welcome Table that she always spoke of.…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Literary Elements In Alice Walker's Everyday Use
    • 102 Words
    • 1 Page

    Literary Elements In Alice Walker's Everyday Use

    Alice Walker, uses many forms of literary elements in her short story Everyday Use, but the one that is constant throughout the story is the use of vivid imagery. Walker, very boldly, describes the plot and the characters in such a way that a reader could almost picture themselves in the setting. So in “Everyday Use”, Alice Walker uses imagery to describe the narrator's family and surroundings in the rural south.…

    • 102 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    From Francesca Woodman and the Mirror Stage
    • 1053 Words
    • 5 Pages

    From Francesca Woodman and the Mirror Stage

    In Douglas Crimp’s article the Photographic Activity of Postmodernism there are several terms that have been brought up over and over again. Presence is one of them, “presence that is only through the absence that we know to be the condition of representation.” It reminds me of one of my favorite photographers --- Francesca Woodman. She once said that “I allow you to see what you couldn’t see --- the inner force of one’s body.” She recreates a space that is simulating the relationship between the infant (the subject) and the mother’s body. The child was safe and content before the alienation, but a sense of lost and insecurity occurs after leaving the mother’s inner.…

    • 1053 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Critical Response to "The Ugly Truth About Beauty" by Dave Barry
    • 859 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Critical Response to "The Ugly Truth About Beauty" by Dave Barry

    Cited: Barry, Dave. "The Ugly Truth About Beauty." The Longman Reader. 7th ed. Ed. Judith Nadell, John Langan, and Eliza A. Comodromos. New York. Pearson, 2005. 368-70…

    • 859 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker's Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self
    • 283 Words
    • 2 Pages

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

    In this essay, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self” by Alice Walker, is about the realization or fulfillment of one's own potential or abilities, and a detailed and harrowing account of how the author's life has been affected by a childhood accident that left her disfigured and blind in one eye and that the world is what we make it to be. As a child Alice Walker has great confidence in herself, her capabilities, and her beauty or cuteness. We see the different changes and her realizations about herself, which she goes through throughout her life. Walker gives us much more than a simple report of what happened in her early years, however. She engaged the readers in delivering a straightforward and attractive story relating to her life as a recollection by also using the accident which happened during her childhood.…

    • 283 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Perception of Beauty
    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Perception of Beauty

    The term ‘beauty’ is used in multiple contexts. These can be divided into ‘inner beauty’, describing a goodness of personality, and ‘outer beauty’, concerned with aesthetic appearance. On the surface, disfigurement affects outer beauty, but it has been found that changes in appearance can cause anxiety, depression, grief, and a lowered self-esteem. These strongly affect a person’s disposition. Thus, defects in outer beauty can indirectly alter inner beauty.…

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Reflection by Christina Aguilera & Song Birds of Pain by Garry Kilworth (Song and Selection Analysis)
    • 906 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Reflection by Christina Aguilera & Song Birds of Pain by Garry Kilworth (Song and Selection Analysis)

    In the song Reflection on the first 4 lines “Look at me, you may think you see who I really am, but you’ll never know me.” I have related these lines in Songbirds of Pain because Anita (the protagonist) has had her identity created for her by Philip. Philip, Anita’s lover, has molded her to be someone who he wants to be with. He did not really know Anita from who she really is because (1) Anita was young when he met her and she has not found herself yet, and (2) he chooses to see what he wants to see and not what things really are. Anita did not complain about this, she did not mind that her opinions were just barrowed from Philip but then she had come to realize that one day Philip would leave her, and she would not have anything, except her beauty. But beauty fades away with youth, and she is growing older so she have decided to have an operation that will make her more beautiful and that will make her beauty last longer. In the third stanza “I am now, in a world where I have to hide my heart and what I believe in. But somehow I will show the world what's inside my heart and be loved for who I am”. Anita has this identity where she cannot show what she really feels and thinks. I think that Anita wanted an operation not just because she wanted everlasting beauty but because she wanted to finally show who she really is, I think she want to know what…

    • 906 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More