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The Color Purple Character Analysis
The Color Purple, is a story of empowerment. Celie is a voiceless woman. Her upbringing makes her believe she will not amount to anyone remarkable. However, the trauma of abuse and manipulation starts melting away due to the support from the women around her. Finally gaining a voice, she rises from the ashes of her past and claims the future. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, explores the growth of Celie’s self worth and the emergence of her identity by detailing her life in a series of letters to God and her sister. These letters detail Celie’s growth by showing first her broken by her abusers, then gradually empowered by women, and finally taking the influence men has over her, and turning that power against her oppressors.
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Celie manages to break free from her abuse by shedding her conventional ideas of religion, and instead putting faith in herself and the natural world. Despite this, religion continues to play an important role in Celie’s life. In her darkest times, when she needed strength, she turned to God for help. However, at this point of her life, she is relying less on religion to deal with her problems, and instead relies on her own strength. Celie finds strength in the freeing beauty of nature. Her later letters communicate this idea,“ Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr.____’s evil sort of shrink . . . You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a’tall,” (197). Celie also recognises that religion confines her to the role of a dutiful wife obedient of her husband. At one point, Celie, angered with the notion of being beholden to any man, she declares that “The God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifiling, forgitful and
Shug also reflects her independence onto characters by explaining how they have control of their own lives. Celie is afraid that she is going to be looked upon badly by God because of the abuse that she has endured. When Celie confesses this to Shug, it is explained to her that God will only be angry if someone does not take time to look and admire what is around them. As Well as this philosophy, Shug also teaches Celie that only she can govern her own self and that no one can take away her self-image. By explaining God's ways, Shug teaches the other characters to hold a sense of independence and self-value.
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.
In The Color Purple by Alice Walker, numerous symbols influence and drive the plot of the novel. One of the most important symbols that Walker incorporates into the plot is the letters written by Celie to either God or Nettie, signifying the power of voice. The epistolary format of the novel itself enables readers to understand Celie, whose letters are initially addressed to God. After being raped by her stepfather at the age of fourteen, he tells her to “never tell anybody but God” (Walker 1); thus, Celie’s original letters are presented more as confessions and prayers. This first letter itself “initiates the story of Celie's unrelenting victimization” (Bloom, and Williams 77-88), and the audience notices that the way in which Celie narrates the events occurring in her life over the course of the next several letters lacks sentiment and opinion....
For a considerable amount of time Celie blindly accepted the fact that she would be treated like a slave in her own home. As a result, Celie demonstrated intense fear and a complete lack of love toward her husband. Because Mr. _____ had originally wanted to marry Celie’s older sister Nettie he felt that in settling for Celie he had the right to treat her as his property. Celie was completely aware of these arrangements “Mr. _____ marry me to take care of his children. I marry him cause my daddy made me. I don’t love Mr. _____ and he don’t love me” (Walker 57). As opposed to most marriages being based on trust, love, and commitment, their bond was based on authority, obedience, and service. Mr. _____ immediately brings Shug Avery into his home when he heard that she was sick so that Celie could take care of her along with his children from a previous marriage. After a short period of time Celie learns about their past and about Mr. _____’s current feelings for Shug. Celie’s blatant disregard to Mr. _____ sleeping with Shug again displays complete apathy toward her husband. Mr. _____’s aggressively dominant role does not denote the conventional husband/wife relationship it seems to more closely represent a master/slave relationship. Mr. _____’s constant oppressive presence causes Celie to live in continuous fear. Celie explains that M...
Analysis of The Colour Purple Film 'The Colour Purple' is a novel written by Alice Walker in 1982. It is the touching and inspirational story of Celie. The story is set at the start of the twentieth century and Celie is a young black girl living in the Deep South. Celie writes letters to God in which she tells about her life - her roles as daughter, wife, sister, and mother. Through the course of her story, Celie meets a series of other Black women who shape her life.
The most important aspect of The Color Purple is the growth and maturity of each individual. There is a huge transition of many of the characters from the beginning to the end of the novel. This evolution of the characters is a recurring theme that runs throughout the novel and can be tracked by Celie’s letters. The women struggle for freedom in a society where they are inferior to men. Towards the end of the novel one can sense the slow evolution towards the increasing empowerment of women.
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.
When he first approached Fonso, Celie and Nettie's stepfather, it was Nettie whom he wanted to marry”(cliffnotes). Nettie is Celie’s sister she was not flashy like Shug, but she was pretty and young. Consequently, Fonso denied Mr.___’s request and married off Celie instead. Over the years Celie suffered from much physical abuse from Mr.___. Because she didn’t possess any contrast to Shug he did not care about Celie’s wellbeing. Along with, “Mr. ___’s harsh treatment of Celie spurs her development”(spark notes). Which means that with every harsh treatment he did to her the more fed up she’s becoming inside, unknowingly sparking her
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.
If we analyse the story instead of the narrative perspective can we see that the main reason of Celie's insecurity is caused by the way she is treated by men. She is sexually abus...
All Stitched Up In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, the main character Celie is a woman in the early twentieth century, this was not a simple task, especially for a woman of color. She has dealt with rape, postpartum depression, suppression, silence, loss, sexual and physical abuse, and not to mention secrecy. Her life was a difficult one, if it could even be called a life in the first place.
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. The progression of civil rights for black women that existed throughout the twentieth century mirrors the development Celie makes from a verbally debilitated girl to an adamant young woman. The expression of racism and sexism that evidenced itself during the postmodern era presented Walker with an opportunity to compose a novel that reveals her strong animosity toward discrimination. Without these outlets, Walker would not have had the ability to create a novel with such in-depth insights into the lifestyle of an immensely oppressed woman.
The Color Purple is about a girl named Celie who is only a young teenager when she is taken and separated from her sister, Nettie. The Color Purple begins with Celie’s first diary entry that she writes at the age of fourteen. She describes her sexual assault experiences and is dependent on the men that treat her extremely poorly.
Throughout the book Celie continues to have a battle with herself. “Yeah I say, but don’t let’s do it in here, let;s go in you and Grady room (126).” In this quote, Celie is talking to Shug after they found the letters that Albert was hiding from her. Celie questions the opening of the letters and makes sure it is done in a secret place so Albert will not find out. The author's purpose in this novel is to show that while one may have a conflict with their self in the end it can be for the good.
The Color Purple is the story around a developing main character named Celie who finds