The Color Purple is a book by Alice Walker. This book is about the trials and tribulations that the main character, Celie, encounters in her life to be reunited with her sister Nettie. Even though they were separated, their love was enduring and it proved itself against all odds. Celie is both the main character and the narrator of the story. The story takes place in Macon county Georgia and it is during the first half of the twentieth century. Most of the story occurs in a black community but some parts are in mostly white dominated areas. There are various forms of conflict in the story. They are man vs. man, man vs. society, and man vs. other man.

Celie plays both the main character and the narrator of the story. She is fourteen when the story begins, and ages as the story progresses. Celie is a black girl who is raped and bears two children by the man she thought to be her father. Celie shares a bond and a love with her sister Nettie that drives her to survive through all of her hardships. She is married off to Mr.______ who originally was interested in marrying Nettie. Their father however claimed that Celie would make the better wife and offered the man a cow along with Celie’s hand in marriage. In desperation for a wife and a mammy to his horrible children, Mr.______ accepts the offer. Once they are married he uses Celie to satisfy his sexual needs and beats her for no good reason. Often times simply because she is not the woman that he longs for, Shug Avery. Shug Avery soon makes an appearance and becomes on of the main characters, although she is initially cold and at times cruel to Celie, she becomes compassionate and plays a big part in her survival. Celie writes to God, which indicates that she has not yet lost her faith. By the end of the story Celie changes in that she becomes a person of loving nature. She doesn’t bare hatred for all of those that oppressed her or did her wrong. She becomes a woman that can stand up for her as well as for those she loves. I feel that for this she is strong even though she did not know this at first. She thought of it only as instinctive survival but it was more than that it was inner strength.

    Shug Avery is another main character. She is a blues singer and also the woman that Mr.______ who she calls Albert longs for. She is his lover. Shug Avery is free spirited she is a woman that knows what she wants and gets it. Albert describes her as manly. Even though Shug did not immediately take to Celie, she soon became compassionate of her and found herself not only being her friend but also her lover. She played a crucial role in the development of Celie as a person. She had kids but her mother raised them. When she finally reached out to them only one of them wanted to know his mama. She met him and they shared time together even though they could not catch up on all the time that was lost. She also had a strong physical attraction to Albert. Shug often spoke about God being content with what you do as long as you are being happy without harming others. She also spoke to Celie about the pleasures that sex can bring, she told Celie about a little red button that women have that makes you feel good when its touched and nourished. By the end of the story Shug changes in that she is more settled down and becomes much more conscience of the affect that her words and actions have on the people surrounding her. I think that Shug Avery is a character that many women back then and now in the present day want to be like. She is desired by men, admired by women, and gazed upon by all. She is determined and has the will power to be in control of her life. I think she is a very enlightening and enchanting. She is deep and admirable.

    Nettie is also another main character. She is Celie’s younger sister. Nettie always had a good mind for learning and she looked up to her teacher Miss Beasley. Nettie has a very strong love for Celie. Soon after Celie is married off to Mr._____ she runs away from home and goes to see Celie at her new husband’s house. When she refuses to have anything to do with him, Mr._____ tells them that Nettie has to leave. As she’s leaving in vengeance for her rejection he tells her that her and Celie will never hear from each other again. Nettie meets Corrine and her husband Samuel, they took her in and took her to Africa. This was important because the children they were raising as their own were actually Celie’s two children. They instantly took to Nettie, which was actually their aunt. Nettie soon becomes attracted to Samuel and soon after the death of his wife, they get married and they cherish each other. In her letters the thing that Nettie touches on the most is her reunion with Celie and how much she has wanted it. With this she demonstrates that no amount of time nor distance is going to tarnish her love for her sister. By the end of the story Nettie changed for the better in that she grew up and matured, also, her time in Africa helped her have a greater understanding and compassion for others. She loved the children very much and became a dedicated schoolteacher while she was over there. I think that Nettie was educated and a corresponding character to Celie’s persona and to the love that she felt and nourished with hopes of one day seeing her sister again.

    A major conflict occurs while Celie is still only a young girl and living at home. Her mother is sick and cannot provide sexual relief to her husband. While she is out one day, he comes up behind Celie and tells her, “You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t.” Then he proceeds to molest her, grabs her breasts and rapes her. When she cried he choked her and told her, “You better shut up and git used to it.” This scene depicts a major conflict in the book because Celie believes this man to be her father and her self-esteem is lowered by his actions so drastically that for most of her life she does not fight back. In some way she thinks that because she is ugly and is black she deserved to be treated like dirt. When she marries Albert, and he rapes and beats her she doesn’t even cry she doesn’t fight back, she simply takes it for what it is.

    Another conflict is when Sofia, Harpo’s wife confronts Celie about the advice she gave to Harpo concerning Sofia’s attitude. Celie told Harpo “Beat her.” When Sofia finds this out she comes and is very straightforward about why she is the way she is; she asks Celie how she of all people could suggest this. Celie becomes ashamed and soon after this they become close friends. The conflict expresses that Celie is jealous of Sofia and that she is aware of her impotency to fight back as Sofia does. She does not mean to harm Sofia just to make her see what it’s like to be her and at the same time she does not want this either. She is sorry for having been of such poor spirit.

    The climax of the story is when Celie discovers that her husband has been stealing and hiding the letters that her sister has been writing to her throughout the years. She is so infuriated that she takes a razor blade and is poised to kill him from behind, but Shug intervenes. She persuades Celie to instead get all the letters, read them, and then to leave with Shug. This is the point of greatest tension because even though Albert has oppressed her, raped her, beat her, and verbally abused her, Celie could not believe he was capable of taking away the only person that she loved and loved her back other than Shug. After this, Celie changed, she was no longer scared of Albert, and she was no longer scared to fight. She would now fight for the love of her sister Nettie.

    The story ends in Celie, her sister, and their children being reunited in their own home. Celie has learned forgiveness and is now friends with Albert. Shug returned home and they are all together at last. The author uses the main characters to show how oppressed women can come together and can find their inner strength and prevail against all odds. The theme applies to the general public in that many people tend to give up when they are faced with hardships, however the characters in the story don’t conform to their grievances. They push forward and strive to better themselves and to find the happiness they know they deserve. The theme applies to me personally because I am a strong believer in women doing anything they put their mind to and in the equality of men and women. This story although complex in its progression, shows to be a strong feminist work.

    I liked the book. I found it very personal, you felt as if you were living in those times and you knew those people. I also found it inspiring. The book was very illustrative on domestic and sexual, and verbal abuse of minority women. This is an issue, which unfortunately still goes on today, and while I always thought and knew it was wrong, the book reinforces the feeling. I would recommend this book to others because it is informative, depictive, encouraging and inspiring not only to women but to anyone who has went through a great deal of suffering, or anyone who has ever felt oppressed.

by: Josefina Rivera

    The subject of the book is that of abusive men and oppressed women. This is pertaining to the overall theme, which is the self-destruction of the black community in the times when they should have been united against the common evil of the discriminative white man. The author uses characterization to illustrate this theme. All of the major characters are oppressed black women. They suffer oppression from the men in their families and furthermore their husbands. The white men in society oppress the black men in turn. Instead of coming home and rejoicing in the wonders of family life, the black men depicted in the story come home and physically, mentally, verbally and spiritually abuse their women. This is the vicious cycle, which goes on throughout most of the story.

    In the beginning we are told of the abuse that Celie receives from her father. He rapes and impregnates her. He also physically threatens her if she says anything about what is happening. After he gets rid of the two children she had by him she, he constantly tells her is she is ugly and makes her fell she is worthless. When he practically sells her off to a man to be married, he tells the man, “she ugly”. He describes her as “spoiled” and as “a bad influence” on the other girls. He also mentions, “she ain’t smart either.” This feeds the insecurities that Celie already has and provides for her rapid decline in self-esteem. Because of this Celie goes through her life thinking that she is worthless and even that she deserves all the turmoil that she experiences.

    Once she was married to Albert, Celie did not receive much kindness from him. On the contrary, he was just as bad as her father had been. He constantly beat her and he would not hesitate to force her to have sexual relations with him. Not only did he abuse her physically and sexually, but also he hurt her spirit by keeping her out of contact with her sister. He hid the letters that Nettie wrote Celie over the years. When told about this Celie could not believe it she said, “Mr._____ mean sometimes, but he not that mean.” It was a turning point where she lost the little faith she had in his human spirit. She nearly killed him.

    Finally Celie learned how to love and be loved. She found this through her unity with Shug Avery. This was symbolic of the great things that can be accomplished if instead of hurting each other we join together to work towards reaching the common good. Celie loved Shug, and from this love came a spirit of loving everything that God had created in its complexity and its simplicity. As she wrote to Nettie referring to Albert, “I don’t hate him.” She did not hate Albert because now she had love and she did not harbor hate in her heart. This helped Celie have hope in that Nettie would soon return, and she did.

    In conclusion women both then and now suffer oppression. The self-destruction of minority groups still exists today. People of minority groups should come to together to help each other face the oppressions of society and should be the support that gives one another hope in that everything will be all right. Instead we have people discriminating amongst each other and devaluing their women, to find an outlet for their frustrations. This is not the way things should have been then, nor how they should be now. I personally think that the only way for people to get ahead is to leave behind all the hatred and untie as one to strive for the greater good of the community, whatever that may be.

by: Josefina

 Letter to The Author

Dear Alice Walker,

    To me the book is about the unfortunate things that happen to people and how they affect them. Celie the main character went through so much and at such a hard time for African Americans in general, she could have chosen to give up and surrender to the evils around her. Instead, she survived, she learned of the good things in the world and she took to these things. I particularly enjoyed the use of language and structure of the book. It is very easy to understand and you feel as if you are either reading direct entries from the character or if that she is talking directly to you. The way she begins every new entry with “Dear God” gives you the sense that no matter how bad of a thing you read she knows inside that things will somehow be all right. I do have a couple of questions though. Why did you leave a blank space after Mr.? And why didn’t Celie find the strength to love and fight on her own, instead of depending on the blues singer Shug Avery? The book had a lasting impact on me because it gives encouragement to do things knowing that others went through so much turmoil and still made it. I think that Celie being reunited with Nettie at the end was more symbolic than anything else was, because it meant that things were now how they should be.

Sincerely,

Josefina

Creative Response

They call her ugly, they call her worthless

She believes them, She thinks they are correct

She walks with her head swung low and her eyes cut toward the floor

Too ashamed to laugh, too scared to be happy

But there is one thing they can’t take

It’s her spirit, her willingness to survive

Her desire to be with her young, to be with her own

And this spirit will not be broken

No, no it cannot be for it is what makes her who she is

It is what has kept her alive

And to this spirit she feeds memories of child’s play

Memories of her own

Her own which gives her strength to go on

Her own who is named Nettie

Josefina