I agree with the idea of selfhood
that Walker presents only at the end of “Beauty: When the other dancer is self”,
because as we read the essay we are taken through the journey of Walker’s life
and find where her selfhood lies throughout this journey.
The ideas that Alice Walker
presents in the beginning of story, are based off the fact she placed her
selfhood in the way she believed world viewed her, and in how she looked and acted
after the accident involving her being shot in the eye with bb gun by her
brother. Throughout the novel she would explain how the accident affected her
and then repeatedly stated, “you did not change, they said”, which proves that
she viewed herself differently then she had prior to this. As the novel goes on
we are shown how Walker is greatly affected, she becomes an introverted person and
her life seems to revolve around the negative affects that accident has had on
her. After the surgery to fix her eye, Walker regains some of her confidence
and is able to live a life that she seems to feel more proud of. When Walker
begins telling us about her baby daughter we realize even though she has
overcome so much she is still living with some insecurity. Walker is insecure
that her baby might be “cruel about physical differences” as most children
unknowingly are, but is amazed to hear her daughter say “Mommy, there’s a world in your eye.” In this moment
Walker says the pain left her, it seems she had accepted herself for who she
was: she had come to love her differences and realized where her true selfhood
lies.
Not in what others think, not in her “shortcomings,” but in
her ability to love herself for who she is. She realized that although she is
different, her past didn’t have to affect her selfhood.
For the most part, it is natural
instinct to place our selfhood in the way we are viewed, or what is “wrong” with
us, but the idea that Walker presents about being content with life, is
something that hopefully we can all attain, hopefully one day we are able to
find positive selfhood just as Walker has.
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ReplyDeleteThank you for your post.
ReplyDeleteAlice Walker’s “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” is the author’s emotional life-long journey of self-discovery that ultimately leads to her own acceptance of beauty. At one point in her story, Walker stated how much she was desperate for beauty. Loathed her injured eye, she mistreated it because it negatively altered her life. She was a proud little girl who had been constantly praised for her look prior to the accident. Suddenly, her entire life perspective changed through the rejections and standards of the world. The changes she went through suggested that society held a universal misconception that standards of beauty must be achieved in order to satisfy the desire to be accepted, wanted, and loved by others and the desire to feel confident in your own skin. It is not until she learned about her self-worth through her daughter’s eyes that she finally made peace with herself. The honest child looked deeply into Walker’s disfigured eye and told her mother that she saw a world in that eye. That’s the day Walker discovered the fact that beauty was an idea based on one’s perception and that it was possible to love that world rooted in her deformed eye. She reconciled with her previous self as they danced and embraced through mutual self-acceptance. Alice Walker’s message is true, illuminating the fact that having faith in yourself is greater than the effort to conform to the pattern of the world because only through self-acceptance that you can embrace your flaws to find peace and happiness.
I really enjoyed the way you summarized everything up. Alice Walker’s essay “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” to me seems to explore the idea how you view the world vs. how the world views you. She packages it as a very insightful walk through her early life and always having the privilege of being “cute”. She recalls being a wide-eyed happy child until an incident with her brothers and a bb gun blinded her in her right eye. After the development of a noticeable scar she became extremely self-conscious. The lowering of her head is more representative of the lack of self she felt. All she had to offer was a scared eye. She let the scar and what everyone may think of it keep from fully experiencing the joys of life. As an early teen her brother took her to get the scar removed and she raised her head again. Her life turned around and she was a success. Her inclusion of the poem “on Sight” is very powerful because it shows that looking back on it, she can see the two different people she’s been. How much you allow yourself to actually exist in the world and not yourself really determines what you get out of life.
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