Rhetorical Analysis Of Beauty When The Other Dancer Is The Self

Writer, Alice Walker, in her narrative essay, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self” recounts a tragic event that occurred at the age of 8 years old. Walker’s objective is to tell her readers about an event that changed not only her physical appearance, but how she considers herself, forever. While speaking about her life after the accident, she uses many rhetorical devices to speak to her readers. Plot development, metaphors, repetition, flashback, and Aristotelian appeals are only some of the devices used. However, those few certainly deliver the message that she is trying to point out to her audience.
Without a plot in narrative writing, it is quite difficult to fully understand what is being said or implied. Chronological order can make or break a story, due to how easy it is to follow along. Regarding plot development, Walker retells her story from the time she is two years old, up until she is a mother to her three year old daughter. An example is, “I am two and a half years old. I want to go everywhere my daddy goes. I am excited at the prospect of riding in a car” (34). To “I am twenty-seven, and my baby daughter is almost three. Since her birth I have worried about her discovery that her mother’s eyes are different from other people’s” (39). By bustling in
Of course, it is not a literal meaning but it does symbolize something greater than that. In the essay, there is a metaphor used that states, “Mommy, where did you get that world in your eye?” (40). Now Walker is not literally meaning, that she has a “world” in her eye. But she explains, “There was a world in my eye. And I saw that it was possible to love it: that in fact, for all it had taught me of shame and anger and inner vision, I did love it” (40). With the explaining of the term “world in my eye”, the reader can use context clues to figure out what the metaphor is symbolizing, and that would be inner