Rhetorical Analysis of Beauty: When The Other Dancer is The Self

In the story, Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self, it is written by Alice Walker and about how someone’s perception of anything is always influenced by experiences. Alice discusses her perception of beauty and how an eye injury changed her perception of beauty early in her life. Her purpose is to show her perspective on inner beauty and to show that it can be different from others. Throughout the story, she uses pathos, logos, and ethos to keep the reader hooked in her argument about beauty as she uses her early life experiences.

Early in Alice’s life, she described herself as a very intelligent, pretty, and a confident young girl and this all changed when she was shot in the eye with a BB gun bullet. Throughout the story, you could see how her confidence is morphed from Alice being a very confident person and it changes to her barely having any confidence in herself at all towards her mid-childhood. At first, she would describe herself as the prettiest and the reader could also see her confidence when she discusses having to give her Easter speech and receiving compliments about how pretty she is. Then the author discusses how everything changed when she was shot in the eye by a BB gun bullet. Alice talks about how her parents did not take her to the doctors until a week later and her doctor says, “Eyes are sympathetic,' he says. 'If one is blind, the other will likely become blind too'. This quote displays logos because the doctor was referring to medical evidence interpreting what could have happened if it was not for her luck.

After the incident, she was hit with a lot of bullying and questioning about her eye and that dropped her confidence and it even made her change schools a few times. When Alice was 12 years old, she says that she abuses herself by saying, “I rant and rave at it, in front of the mirror. I plead with it to clear up before morning. I tell it I hate and despise it.” (Walker). This quote displays pathos because it shows how unhappy she was with herself and how she looks, which causes the audience to sympathize with her. When she indirectly calls herself ugly by saying,” I do not pray for sight. I pray for beauty.” (Walker) This is another use of pathos and it causes the audience to sympathize with her. When she was 14 years old, she went to the hospital because she had a “glob” removed from her injured eye and removed all of the ugly white substance from it. After that she thought she became a whole new person and is now raising her head and saying that “I've raised my head classwork comes from my lips as faultlessly as Easter speeches did, and I leave high school as valedictorian, most popular student, and queen, hardly believing my luck”(Walker). This quote displays ethos by discussing the author’s brilliance and validity and the author’s good qualities throughout the story.

Towards the end of the story she’s a little bit older and she has an interview with a journalist, and she is still very self-conscious of her eye and she worries that she will not get enough sleep and her eye will look tired. This displays that she’s still very self-conscious about her appearance even after years after the incident. When Alice is 27 years old, she worries about if her daughter will be embarrassed because her mother’s eyes are different from others. Alice talks about how “Since the birth, I have worried about her discovery that her mother's eyes are different from other people’s” (Walker). This quote displays ethos because Walker discusses that she still has opinions on beauty standards yet she still has doubts and this shows that this quality shows that we are human and that we are going to have our doubts on beauty no matter what. Alice uses ethos to discuss beauty standards after the accident and how it was a challenge for her to see how beautiful she is throughout the story.

Throughout the story, the author does use pathos, logos, and ethos, but it doesn’t balance out the rhetorical analysis triangle. The story is well written and uses more of a relatable and sympathetic approach so the audience is engaged. The rhetorical triangle is not balanced because the author uses a lot of pathos and some ethos but there isn’t a lot of logos. Logos appeals are needed to show scientific and statistical facts and the author barely has any. She just uses pathos and ethos to make the audience sympathize with her. So, I think personally she does not win her argument about her opinion on how the perception of beauty can be changed based on an injury such as hers. She would have needed more scientific information and statistics to balance out the amount of ethos and pathos appeals. The only evidence of logos appeal is when the doctor talks about scientific facts about her eye. The majority of the pathos and appeal is about how she felt about herself and her appearance.