The Prophet by Khalil Gibran: On Beauty

Inside Society In general society, people are extremely shallow and are attracted to others physically instead of emotionally. The outward appearance of someone has more meaning to the human eye than one’s inner beauty, unfortunately. Khalil Gibran’s “On Beauty” chapter in his novel, The Prophet, discusses many of his idealistic views on beauty. Written in 1923, The Prophet has many aspects that still apply today, but also some that do not. Idealistically, people should search for inner beauty when seeking a significant other rather than outer beauty; but realistically people do not. Gibran speaks mostly of how beauty is humbleness and kindness: he does not speak of outer appeal. He uses a lot of imagery, metaphors, and similes to visually show the readers how beautiful and important he thinks the soul is. Khalil Gibran seems to have idealistic views on the ideas of what beauty is, not realistic views compared to today’s time and even his own time. In Gibran’s time, all the women were beginning to rebel. They all began to wear shorter skirts, tight corsets, and pants; they also cut their hair into a ‘bob,’ the blunt, chin-length hair. The girls also began to wear cosmetics to attract older boys. They became sex symbols to men and icons to women; that is when it started becoming truly insignificant whether one had a good personality or not. Gibran did not interpret the 1920s views the same way others did; he repeatedly used imagery to convey that beauty was indeed one’s soul rather than one’s outer shell. In Beauty In history, the author defines a human’s physical beauty in more direct terms: “The beautiful are those who are immediately exciting to almost all of the opposite sex.” (Arthur Marwick). Being that Beauty in History was based on the women of the early 1920s, this proves that even in Khalil Gibran’s time, beauty was basically defined by how attractive one was to the eye. Although Gibran’s ideas were ideal, sadly they were not real in his time or