Coming to Terms: Alice Walker Article (Revised Edition)

For my Advanced Compostion class, we were told to post a blog every week. This week I deicided to take a revised peice from class and post it. I decided to choose this piece. Enjoy :)

Alice Walker writes about how meditation helped her after her divorce with her husband among many other problems she had faced in her life. Her drive in this piece seemed to be her love of meditation and the peace that it brings to her every day. The piece explains the ideas of meditation, the things that it can do for one, and what exactly it does for her. She is very specific and all telling (explaining all aspects).  Also, she does not hold her feelings back; she lets it all out. Walker lets all of her readers know that meditation makes her so much happier and much better. All of the “loss, confusion, sadness. Anxiety Attacks. Depression. Suicidal inclinations. Insomnia,” gone.

            Meditation helps Walker a lot. She states that it “began to seem as if my inner vision had cleaned.” Meditation has affected her in a very strong way as it does with other people and this is clear throughout the piece. She writes, “I felt the lightness of heart that comes from knowing you’ve found something truly reliable and helpful.” As the reader, one can completely agree with this statement. It is clear as the reader that the meditation she practices helped her over come many things in her life. By her writing this short article, she allows others to share insight on her life. She completely opens herself up to all criticism which is truly inspiring to the reader. Near the very end of her piece she writes, “Our way to forgiveness, our way to letting go, our way to understanding, compassion and peace”. This line basically sums up her entire writing about meditation. Everything she is trying to say, said, or was going to say comes out through this sentence to the reader.  

This text describes what meditation does for Walker very well. She also does a great job of explaining what problems she has to overcome such as her divorce and her jumpiness. She could finally listen to the radio in which she wasn’t able to do before because her soul had banned it. Although, one aspect she occludes to is the method or technique of meditation that she uses herself every day. She writes about her “mastery of techniques” but fails to inform the reader on which techniques these are. There are many techniques for meditation such as Mantra Meditation, Steady gaze (Trataka), Chakra Meditation, Vipassana Meditation, Raj Yoga Meditation, Zazen, and Nada yoga. Walker could have used any of these forms. Something that she does quite well throughout the piece is describing what mediation does for her personally. She goes through many specific examples where meditation practically saved her and helped her overcome her issues at the time. This is a very good article that one can appreciate because of the fact that Walker is able to come out and explain in great detail how she feels and tries to reach out and relate to the reader. She acknowledges that she has problems and found an effective way to deal with them.