The Color Purple Religion Essay

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The Color Purple: Spirituality The novel, The Color Purple, written by Alice Walker is a series of diary entries and letters. The concept of religion holds a large part in the novel. The character Celie communicates with God through letters that she is writing to maintain and support her mental health. Walker transforms Celie and her sister, Nettie, towards a spiritual understanding of God, through the journey of life. A Significant point in Celie’s spiritual growth is when she turns away from the stereotypic Christian church. Celie is indicating this in a letter to Nettie, “I don’t write to God no more, I write to you” (p. 193). With Shug’s insight of God, that in order to worship, one needs look at God creations are beautiful. Namely, from the small things to the “color of purple” (p. 198) and not the injustice. That God just wants humans to love what “it” has created. (P. 196). Finding out Shug developed …show more content…

Equally important, Nettie’s letters to Celie is her way to connect with God as she states, “When I don’t write to you I feel as bad as I do when I don’t pray, locked up in myself and choking on my own heart. I am so lonely, Celie” (p. 130). The time, Nettie spends in Africa and with the Olinka people she discovers a new more internal form of spiritual similar to Celie. Nettie experiences the Olinka people’s pantheist belief, witnessing the roof-leaf ceremony, the Olinka expressive that they know that it is "not Jesus Christ, but in its own humble way is it not God"(p. 155). Nettie explains to Celie that “God is different to us now, after all these years in Africa. More spirit than ever before, and more internal” (p. 261). Nettie realizes, Like her sister, that “most people think [God] has to look like something or someone—a roofleaf or Christ--- but [she doesn’t]. And not being tied to what God looks like, frees us” (p.

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