Religion In Alice Walker's The Color Purple

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Alice Walker believes that religion should be something that you believe in, not something that other people have forced you to believe. If you are enjoying life with the faith that you have, then that is all that matters. If it’s not broke, why fix it? You need to be yourself and be content with who you are. Although, if someone is in need of help, then you should attempt to help them. Alice Walker shows her opinion of this multiple times in her novel The Color Purple. Throughout the book there are many examples of people attempting to force their religions on others and this has been proven not to work. Walker thinks that the only time it is right to push your religion on someone is when they are not happy with the life they are living and they are willing to change. If someone is …show more content…

She has many strong beliefs about what God is like. She believes that God is neither a he or she, she thinks that God loves everything that you love and a whole mess more, she thinks all that God wants is for us to appreciate what he has put on this earth and she thinks that God is in nature. Shug was a happy woman, she most certainly enjoys life. You could definitely say that she is content with the way she was living. Nevertheless, people still came and tried to force her into believing in a new religion that she was not used to. An example of this is when Shug states “Just when I hurt so much I don’t know my own name, they think a good time to talk bout repent” (121). This quote is about when Shug was having her baby, the people of the church came to her house, not to help her, but to tell her that she better start to repent for the sins she has committed. Shug was appalled by the group of people that did this to her. She was happy with her religion and that was all that mattered to her. She did not care that her religion was different from most people's, she only cared about being

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