Denerick Patterson
I agree with Alice Walker's essay about selfhood , people do care about what other people say and it sometimes kills people self-esteem and makes people go into depression. For example , when Alice Walker says , " I abuse my eye. I rant and rave at it , in front of the mirror." From this example it shows that Alice is upset with her eye , she doesn't like the recognition it getting from other people. She feels like other people are treating her different and she's not confident in herself anymore because she has that on her eye but when she got it removed it changed her whole attitude. For example when she says, " her brother took her to a doctor and had it removed and she turned into the girl raises her hand now and won the boyfriend of her dreams." From this example it shows that just from taking the wound from off her eye it made her feel like a different person.
I feel like a lot of people don't have thick skin and when somebody says something about their flaw they kind of get emotional. Then that's leads to a lot of depression or even worse people committing suicide. We should all use the golden rule " do unto others that you would like them to do to you." If this was used more a lot of incidents that be happening wouldn't happen. But a lot of people wont agree with that and continue to bully and not caring about other people feelings so, we have to let go of what other people say and stop letting them get to us. Or if somebody says something about you and it kind of get to you always remember , " sticks and stones may break my bones but words wont hurt me" , the saying will help you get over there mean words.
Alice Walker author of the essay, Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self, from The Norton Reader is one of Alice’s best works of art. Inside this short story a girl in the story loses her vision because of an accidental pellet gun shot by her brother and now has a deformed eye which hurts her self esteem and self imagine about herself. Through out the whole story she thinks that she is this beyond words ugly individual and that it is all to blame to the accident that day. Later on in the end, she realizes something pretty incredible and life changing. Alice Walker writes “And I saw that it was possible to love it…” (NR 61.) Although everyone around her always told her that she was still beautiful after the accident, finally one day she accepted her appearance for the way it was. The life lesson of selfhood learned is that beauty is all based on one’s own perception of themselves. I feel that once her baby child realized that her mom was a little different then everyone else because of this eye but that is wasn't a bad thing at all, it was what made her different. It is that I agree with this and all of the other idea’s of selfhood beliefs presented in this piece by Walker and that beauty is truly within ones self.
ReplyDeleteAlice Walker writes about having an inner self and a self that everyone else observes. I feel this is true; we have an inner self that is far different than the one everyone else sees. Walker grew up being self conscious of her injured eye. Prior to being shot with her brothers BB gun, she is playful and described as sassy by adults. After the accident, she has a bump of scar tissue on her eye, that made her extremely self-conscious and, in her view, made her much more shy and effected how she did in school. She got the bump removed, which made her eye appear clearer. She felt this made her more confident, and became valedictorian and popular in school. Later in life, she asked her mother if she had changed after the BB gun incident. Her mother says she did not change at all. This surprised her, because in her mind she was less successful, shy, and had low self-esteem. Walker thought the incident affected her greatly; she struggled with her appearance everyday. To everyone else, she was the same playful, sassy kid she was before. I think this is because she did not change, just her thoughts did. Kids are fairly transparent, so what she is thinking is being reflected outward. After awhile, we develop in inner dialogue that is not so public. It starts to develop independently to the outer self. In my opinion, she would have developed a self she thought was different than how she used to be whether she got shot in the eye or not. So the inner self is our thoughts and the way the perceive ourselves, the outer is our actions and how others perceive us. And both are equally as representive of whom we are.
ReplyDeleteI too agree with Alice Walker’s idea of selfhood. Primarily her idea that our opinion and idea of self will change drastically, but we have to learn to accept ourselves for who we are. Early on in Walker’s Beauty: Where the Other Dancer Is the Self, she explains that her idea of self was based solely on the idea that she was adorable. However, in 1952 when she was eight, her brothers accidentally shot her in the right eye, leaving a blob of scar tissue, changing her idea of herself forever. The deformation in her eye causes her to hide her face from everyone, including family, and causes a severe drop in her self-worth. This is changed, however, when her brother Jim and his wife take her to see a doctor that removes the blob of tissue which helps her regain some of the confidence she once had. Her main idea comes during the last four paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteWalker states that when she is twenty-seven and her daughter, Rebecca, is almost three she begins to worry that her daughter will turn out like the mean children that she was forced to deal with when she was growing up. However, when Rebecca truly looked at her mother’s deformed eye, she did not see something disgusting, she saw a beautiful world. Walker then states that she dreamed she was dancing “… happier than [she’s] ever been… [when] another bright-faced dancer joins [her]”. The dancer is herself. Only this time she isn’t repulsed. She sees a beautiful person, not the just deformation. Walker is telling us that, after the accident, she was never truly happy until she accepted herself for the way she is. This is her way of reiterating the timeless concept of the importance of self-acceptance, and that we are only truly beautiful when we are able to ‘dance’ with ourselves.
I completely agree with your statement Denerick, regarding Alice Walker’s idea of selfhood as well as your own. Walkers attempt to convey the vulnerability we have concerning self-perception, using a plethora of pathos after the accident involving her eye, personally had the effect of reflection towards my own insecurities and how they influence me emotionally. This response is predominantly due to the beautiful style of the essay and specifically one paradoxical extended metaphor that shows throughout. Alice Walker interestingly creates a hugely significant breaking point at the time of the main character’s accident regarding her own beauty – which is of much value to her – and follows it with constant feedback from the people around her, asking if she’s changed. This is paradoxical because most of the essay consists of Walker revealing insight on how she is severely affected by her eye, for example when she ‘abuses her eye’ and rants over it, or later when she is 27 and thinks her child will say something about it, therefore hearing from ‘they’ that she doesn’t seem different, signifies the distinct contrast between how you see yourself versus how others see you. I agree with this difference in that confidence, which is an immediate result of self-perception, can be independent of how other actually view you, which I’ve come to learn through hundreds of videos throughout my years showing the importance of self-love for overweight individuals on my social media feed, as well as random articles on the internet underlining the power of confidence when approaching women. All-in-all, I’ve learned that self-perception fuels your emotions and severely impacts your behavior, and the simple yet effective solution for ailing low confidence or destructive self-perception is by loving yourself and being as confident in yourself as possible, because no other choice of life exists.
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