Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self by Alice Walker - Critical Essay

Introduction

We will discuss the themes and analyze the main character in "Beauty - When the Other Dancer is The Self" Summary. Alice Walker's life is described in the essay "Beauty": When the Other Dancing Is The Self. Walker was a pretty girl when she was young. She was just a child when her brother shot her in her eye with a aBB gun. Her eye is scarred with white scar tissue, and she is blinded by the pellet. She begins to notice a change in her personality. Instead of lowering her head to others, she doesn't want them to see her eye. It is also a common reason she is bullied at school. She is now fourteen years old and has had the scar tissue taken out of her eye for many years. She looks up once the tissue has been removed and her personality returns to how it was when she was younger: proud and bright. She is asked to interview her about her new book, thirty years later. Soon, she begins to recall and becomes self-conscious about her eyes. Her husband then reminds her that her eye is not her fault. She has a conversation with her daughter, aged 27, about the eye. She says that her daughter has "A whole world" in it. Alice Walker realized that the scar on her eyes was something she loved. After this realization, Alice Walker was able to accept it.

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There are several key points that stand out throughout the essay. Walker believed she was beautiful as a child. It was how she treasured that beauty and how it shaped her character. The essay's second and most important part was her being shot in the eye. This pivotal event set the stage for the rest of the essay and the story that it tells. The third is how she grew up and became a woman with her deformed eyes. Many people saw her differently now that her eye was broken and bruised. Her peers bullied and harassed her. I was struck by this because she was beautiful when she was free of the deformity. She had the eye lump removed in the fourth. Walker was able to look back at herself as she did when she was younger. Walker believed for a time that her eye was the reason she was so ugly.

Walker realized that she wasn't ugly at all. Walker's three-year-old daughter said to Walker, "Mommy! There's a world in my eye!" Then, she asked her gently but with great interest, "Mommy! Where did you find that world in my eye ?"".." This is how Walker realized that her eye wasn't ugly. It was only other people that made her believe this. The essay is littered with patterns. The words "I remember" as well as the expression "I am *blank* year old" are two things that repeat perfectly. Both of these statements could have been used by her to show her audience that she was aware of key moments in her life that had influenced her views on beauty. Her ideas of beauty and personal feelings are two key themes that she repeats. Because Walker believed it reflected her beauty, these two concepts are interconnected. Her personal feelings about herself were most intense when her eye was disfigured. Her feelings were happy when it wasn't. The essay contained some binaries that I found interesting, such as the notions of beauty with uglyness and blindness without sight. These binaries are crucial because they show the author's conflicting feelings and how they influenced her essay writing.

While all aspects are important, I believe that only three are more important than others and are worth more attention. First, the beauty concepts. This essay is centered on beauty, and the title also includes it. Walker's discussion about her views on beauty as a young woman and how they changed over time is very important. This leads me to my second aspect: the contradictions between beauty and ugly. Walker's perceptions of each of these have changed over the years. This shows that it no longer affects her. Her key words, "I remember", are the final. Her simple statement of "I remember" demonstrates how meticulous she was about her life and the importance of capturing all the details. Walker states some obvious things, but there are also some things she writes that aren’t so obvious. First, she hated her eyes. Even though she was ugly, her eye is what made her beautiful. It was her eye abnormality that caused her to hate it. The second is the idea that she has changed. We see Alice asking her family and friends questions about Alice throughout the essay. They all reply, "You didn't change." This is because she wanted to stress how her accident made her change. Walker's last implicit thought was that she hated guns. A BB gun was what cost her her eye. Walker wrote at the end of her essay "So what, my brothers grew-up to buy more powerful pellet guns and to carry real guns." This was the moment she realized the value of her eye.

I believe that walker was averse to guns because of the potential violence they could inflict and the damage they can do. There are many interpretations that could be given to what the reader believes. One imperfection doesn't make you a bad person. Alice's beauty standards for what she considered beautiful and ugly were based on one single imperfection: her eyes. Her belief that she was ugly would not have been formed if the accident had never occurred. The second interpretation I would suggest is. Another interpretation is not to worry about how you look. This interpretation could be possible because many people throughout the text tell her she didn't change.

This could be an indication to Walker and the audience to forget about their appearance. But, I believe there is a more plausible interpretation than any other. My interpretation of beauty is that it is all in the eyes of the beholder. To narrow my research, I used five analytical steps throughout this essay. The first step was to summarize the events. Next, we will highlight the most important parts. One example is her eye being broken and her growing up in a deformed state. Her daughter later revealed this to her. Third, her conflicting beauty views with bullies and others around her.

Conclusion

Finally, I have some implicit views that she has shared in her essay. This allows me to see below the surface and make these implicit ideas explicit. Although I am done with the essay, one question remains. Did her family or friends ever help Walker when she was bullied as a child and became upset about it? In the essay, she doesn't say that. She only asks her family about how she is now. Walker doesn't talk about being comforted or supported by anyone close to her. Although it may have been a minor detail, it caught my attention. With all these thoughts in my head, I came to the conclusion that beauty is in one's eye.