"First Person Plura"/ “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self”

I imagine Alice Walker and Paul Bloom, if they were to sit down and have dinner with one another, would find something to share in common in regards to one's Self. Paul Bloom acknowledges the existence of a multitude of personalities within each person. While Alice Walker in her essay highlights the fragility of our temperament. Alice remembers vividly being the confident, dauntless child she was. She flourished in social situations, giving formal speeches without hesitation and promptly declaring herself "the prettiest" to her father in an assertion that was reason enough to choose her over her siblings (and he did). Then preceding retelling of an accident that left her eye blinded and visibly scarred she points out the twist of fate abruptly stating, "It was great fun being cute. But then, one day, it ended." This is followed by a dramatic withdraw socially and academically for her. She recollects this time negatively. At age 14 she has the mass left in her eye removed and minimizes the appearance of the damage. Although, as drastically as her personality seemed to 180 at the occurrence of the injury, she claims that, "Almost immediately I become a different person from the girl who does not raise her head." Paul Bloom would consider this an illustration of his point, "The idea is that instead, within each brain, different selves are continually popping in and out of existence." Paul Bloom believes our personalities can be conditional and dominate depending on circumstance. Alice Walker’s essay gives a seamless account of how delicate our dispositions may be and how rapidly they can polarize.