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

Ego is defined as the opinion we have of ourselves. Sometimes the way we view ourselves is different from how we actually are. In A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia, an angel changes through time from an old man who was tormented by the townspeople. Here we see that the torture the man went through did not affect who he was as a person. On the other hand, in Alice Walker’s Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self, a young girl changes the way she views herself based on what she thought people were thinking. The little girl’s life changed for the worse after an accident. In A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings and Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self, we see how two very different people deal with how they let their ego …show more content…
During her childhood, she had an accident with one of her brothers and became blind in one eye. As she grew, she constantly told herself she did not change to try to suppress all the negative thoughts in her head. She constantly judged herself and became super insecure about how she looked. Later on, she had a daughter. Her daughter said that she [her mother] had the world in her eyes and instantly, the way she viewed herself completely changed. Throughout her life she struggled with how she depicted herself. She believed that everyone was saying bad things about her and no one wanted to be around her. But as soon as her daughter told her she had the world in her eyes, she then finally accepted who she was and became confident. In this story, she lets all the negative thoughts she has of herself get the best of her, unlike the old man with wings. There is nothing more heartbreaking than reading about how a person views themselves as worthless as she was. The little girl had a negative perspective with the accident which caused her ego to go down the drain as she grew. But soon enough, she outgrew it and loved herself for who she was on the