Discussion Questions - Advanced A B

Text: Beauty - When the Other Dancer Is the Self

by Alice Walker

Here are the questions we will discuss on 10/31 in class. Remember to go to the Engineering Building E105. Please be prepared to take part in the seminar -- look forward to hearing from you.

1. How does Rebecca react upon viewing the narrator’s eye? How does Walker react to her reaction? Where does the baby get the idea of the world?

2. Why does the narrator like the idea of having a world in her eye?

3. Walker writes her essay by selecting particular moments in her life. What does each moment show? How do these moments relate to Walker’s theme?

4. What is the effect of using the present tense throughout the text?

5. What is the effect of ending the essay by recounting a dream? How does the dream relate to the essay’s title?

6. The essay ends in the music of a blind musician, Stevie Wonder, and embracing ‘another bright-faced dancer’- her another self.
How does Wonder, the blind singer, express Walker’s idea about ‘seeing’?
What is the effect of the narrator’s dance? What kind of dancers are there in different cultures? What are the functions or meanings in different types of dances? What does the narrator’s dance mean here?

7. In general, what do you think about this essay after you read it?