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Literary criticism alice walker
Literary criticism alice walker
Racism in alice walker works
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In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, she portrays all of the women with different characteristics. Celie is shy and timid in the beginning, believing she is ugly, but in the end she overcomes her fears and gains a confidence in herself. Sofia is a strong-willed woman, who won’t let anything bother her or get the best of her. Shug Avery is confident in herself and while she may seem to have an uncaring demeanor, underneath she is a kind person. Throughout Alice Walker’s life she has been through so many things and her way of dealing with these things are to write about them. In The Color Purple, Alice Walker invested facets of her life into the main female characters.
When she was eight years old, Alice Walker began writing and said “With my family, I had to hide things, and I had to keep a lot in my mind.” Later on in that same year, Alice was shot in the eye with a BB gun pellet which blinded her in the eye, scarring and blinding that same eye. Because of her eye, she felt that she was ugly, she became timid, and would often react to statements that were not meant to be insulting. I feel that Alice Walker based the character Celie off of this time in her life. In the book, Celie is repeatedly told that she is ugly and that she is not good enough. Celie is afraid of the cruelty others have imposed upon her and she is shy and avoids conflict. Alice Walker once said “What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.” Celie does not understand why others treat her harshly, thus she remains afraid of it. It seems that once we understand what brings up down, it only empowers us. In the conclusion of the book, Celie finally overcomes her fears and tells Albert that she is leaving him. Just like Celie, Alice Walker eventually overc...
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...nything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.’” With each tale she spins, Alice Walker weaves a little piece of herself into the fabric of the story. This is one of the things about Alice Walker that makes her work so significant, because her stories are not like something someone just made up. She writes her books so that you understand what life was like for her, and it makes her stories all that much more relatable.
Works Cited
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/20/books/books-of-the-times-if-the-river-is-dry-can-you-be-all-wet.html http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/story.html http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alicewalke146802.html http://www.poemhunter.com/alice-walker/biography/ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alicewalke382390.html
This attitude she thinks will obtain anything she desires has finally failed her and she will leave empty handed as a theme that unless you’re nice, you’re not going to get what you want. A symbol most usually gone unnoticed is the correlation between the author, Alice Walker, and the characters she writes about, Maggie and Dee. From the background information on Ms. Walker, we see that she is the youngest of eight children who at one point in her life may have led to her not getting what she wanted.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Harcourt Bruce Jovanovich, Publishers. New York, San Diego, London, 1992
Alice Walker is woman of class, diversity, and feminism. More importantly, she is a civil rights activist, novelist, poet, and essayist. Growing up poor, I would like to think motivated her, and crafted her to the woman she is at this time in her life. Her works is a tasteful gratification of what it was like fighting for equality for all African Americans, affirming the possibility to love and forgive amongst black and white people, and just writing impeccable wisdom. While attending Spelman College, she turned down a scholarship to study abroad in Paris, and instead she went to Mississippi to pursue civil rights.
Within The Color Purple by Alice Walker, women are treated as inferior to men therefore they must obey them. Through the strength and wisdoms Celie gains from other women, she learns to overcome her oppression and realize her self worth as a woman. The women she has met throughout her life, and the woman she protected since young, are the people that helped her become a strong independent woman. Sofia and Shug were there for Celie when she needed someone to look up to and depend on. Nettie was able to push Celie to become a more educated, independent person. The main source of conflict in this book is Celie’s struggle with becoming an independent woman who needs not to rely on a man. Throughout the book we see her grow as a person and become independent in many ways through her experiences with the powerful women in her life.
It was from all this extraordinary strength that Alice found her strength,her mother handed down respect for the possibilities as she prepares the art that is her gift. She wrote about how our mother and grandmothers were been enslaved and were put to work so hard that they didn 't get the time to search for their inner gift. Alice advocated that women should use their mind and thought than been a baby bearer. That African American women then have gone through a lot of abuse and its time to wake up from what the society think of them and use their artistic talent that they were born
Celie is a victim of mistreatment and isolation in a world that considers women inferior to men. To instill fear and obedience in women, men conduct themselves in a hostile manner towards women. They manage women similar to slaves and sexually dominate them. When Celie is barely fourteen her stepfather, causing her to become pregnant twice, violates her multiple times. In a letter to God, Celie writes “I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it” (Walker 11). Intended merely to satisfy Pa, Celie...
Alice Walker’s writings were greatly influenced by the political and societal happenings around her during the 1960s and 1970s. She not only wrote about events that were taking place, she participated in them as well. Her devoted time and energy into society is very evident in her works. The Color Purple, one of Walker’s most prized novels, sends out a social message that concerns women’s struggle for freedom in a society where they are viewed as inferior to men. The events that happened during and previous to her writing of The Color Purple had a tremendous impact on the standpoint of the novel.
Alice Walker’s writing is encouraging, for it empowers individuals to embrace their culture, human decency, and the untold stories of those who were forgotten. She slays gender roles while fighting for the rights of everyone, and frequently describes how one can impact the life of another and how much control one should have over another’s fate in her themes. Walker’s sublime style exhibited within her works goes lengths to display her themes which are based mainly off of the passionate women she was raised around and the circumstances they overcame. She uses symbolism and metaphors to highlight the themes within her works. Transition needed. carefully cultivates texts that demonstrate her ability to appeal to the minds of the common populace.
The novel, The Color Purple, is an epistolary novel. In the letterforms, Alice Walker gives several ideas, such as, friendship, domination, courage & independence. She impacts readers by looking at the story through the eyes of Celie and Nettie. The book describes the fateful life of a young lady. It tells how a 14 year old girl fights through all the steps and finally she is in command for her own life. Celie is the young lady who has been constantly physically, sexually, and emotionally abused.
Throughout The Color Purple, Alice Walker conveys the importance and the power of female friendship in all forms. It shapes and forms the strong bond of female companionship as means of refuge from oppression, male dominance and a world full of violence perpetrated against women which the female protagonists wish to break free from. Walker constantly reminds the reader of the gruelling pursuit of identity that all are in search for, both in Africa and America. For females to gain equal recognition as individuals who deserve fair and just treatment in a patriarchal society where, as Albert states “Men suppose to wear the pants” in society. In conclusion, not only leading Celies personal growth as an independent woman but also to the extraordinary establishment of a female solidarity network within the novel.
The Color Purple follows Celie's transformation from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. What is remarkable is the fact that this transformation does not merely compose the plot of the novel, it also dominates the layout of the pages. The book's chapters are not written in a typical fashion as each chapter is a letter written from Celie to God, Celie to her sister Nettie, or Nellie to Celie. Alice Walker utilized this method of storytelling to give the reader a very personal glimpse into Celie's mind and soul. The writer gets a feel for Celie through her writing style- she uses specific phrasing to express herself and, over time, her mechanical writing skills improve greatly. We see Celie's thought process as she makes decisions and then writes about them. This powerful narration is the main driving force behind the words.
For centuries, women struggle to obtain equality with men. They are invisible and not given opportunities because of their gender. Feminism is the matter of consideration in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. The feminist movement has been the key to give the rights to women who have been stricken of their equality and privileges that men had fail to give them. It is believed that women have every right to be equal with men and feminism is achieving this gradually. Feminism is favorable to the men, women, and their families because it gives an equal opportunity in life
Alice Walker's use of characterization in her novel The Color Purple depicts her main theme of female empowerment and the importance of maintaining an assertive voice. The tyrannical male characters, the victimized female characters, and the development of the protagonist, Celie, express Walker's firm views of female independence in a male dominated society. Her feminist views have been influenced by her experiences with discrimination as an African-American woman as well as her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. These experiences serve as an inspiration for developing the character Celie, a young black woman discovering her own sense of self while battling a male dependent environment.
Sedgewick observes, one’s social position is affected by various axis of classification such as gender, sexuality, race, class and the interplay of these social identities. In The Color Purple by Alice walker, Sedgewick’s observations ring true. Celie, the main character in Walker’s novel, is a perfect example of these observations put forth by Sedgewick. Celie’s social position is indicative of her gender, sexuality, race, and class; as a Black woman living in Georgia in 1910 to 1940, one can expect to witness the general ‘acceptable’ racism present within the novel towards people of color. Despite the ‘acceptable’ racism, the novel accentuates the hardships and struggles the women of color in this novel have to go through. The social positions of the characters, more so Celie and Sofia, in Walker’s The Color Purple are based on the social identities of their gender, race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity.
One of the most popular works by Walker was, The Color Purple. In this Alice Walker story, the reader meets a girl named Celie. In this novel, Walker takes the reader on a journey through much of Celie’s life. While taking the reader through this tale, Walker draws attention to a number of social aspects during this time period. Through Cilie’s life, Walker brings to light the abuse and mistreatment of African American women from 1910 through the 1940’s. “Women were also regarded as less important than men-both Black and white Black women doubly disadvantage. Black women of the era were often treated as slaves or as property” (Tavormina page 2...