The Color Purple Literary Analysis

The Color Purple is about a young woman named Celie that has been abused and oppressed by many male characters in the novel. This oppression and abuse, with the help of others, have helped her become stronger and less dependent on men. In the preface, the author, Alice Walker, says that the book’s intent is “to explore the difficult path of someone who starts out in life already spiritual captive, but who, through her own courage and the help of others, breaks free into the realization that she, like nature itself, is a radiant expression of the heretofore perceived as quite distant Divine.” (Walker, ) This has led me to investigating the way this character, Celie, has grown into an empowering women. The author’s purpose of the book was to

Albert then, calls Kate and when she returns she is shaking and has tears in her eyes. She tells Celie she has to go but also says “You got to fight them, Celie, she say. I can’t do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself.” (Walker, 22). From this we can infer that Albert didn’t like the way Kate was trying to get Celie to act and especially not how she treated Harpo. This shows that Albert doesn’t really believe Celie should get any help or any special treatment because to him, she’s just a housewife. From this we see how Albert really sees Celie and how he doesn’t really care about her. Kate is the second person that tells Celie she has to fight for herself because, like Nettie, she also saw that Celie wasn’t being treated like a wife but more like a slave. The way she saw her dressed and the lack of attention she got from Albert concerned her and she wanted Celie to see that she deserve much more than what she was getting. Celie thinks about her sister and how she fought for herself but died. She believes there is no good I’m fighting because of that. She also says that “I don’t fight, I stay where I’m told. But I’m alive” (Walker, 22). Now with her believing her sister is dead, Celie will refuse to fight because the one person that did died. She’s afraid the same thing will happen to her so she will continue being the way she