Use Of First Person Point Of View In Alice Walker's The Color Purple

The Color Purple is an epistolary novel that tells the story of a young black girl, Celie, who is abused by her father and others, left with no other option but to confide in God and use writing as a way of journal therapy and to find her own sense of agency. In The Color Purple by Alice Walker, the author uses first person point of view to make evident to the reader Celie’s growth from an emotionally detached being who is not capable of making her own decisions to a full fledged person with her own sense of agency throughout the novel.
Walker allows the reader to experience Celie’s situation through first person point of view. First person POV gives readers a sense of immediacy because the reader is seeing Celie’s reaction as soon as something

happens, the reader can see her thoughts and emotions. In addition, it creates a sense of intimacy and connection with the character’s mindset and emotional state. The reader can experience Celie’s situation which is probably something that they might not want to be a part of in real life but allows to better understand Celie. By using first person point of view Walker can create a direct connection with Celie’s experience of abuse. This allows Celie to tell her personal story, what she sees, hears, does, feels, says, etc. and the reader can see the side of Celie that she cannot show to others.
First person POV shows the reader how Celie reacts to different situations and helps engage the reader’s mind and emotions. For example, in the first letter Celie drops a huge bomb on the reader by revealing the first time that she was sexually abused by her father. Just this first letter creates a feeling of closeness to Celie that if told in any other POV would have been awkward and would not have created that big of an impact on the reader as Walker intended to. This POV feels as if Celie were speaking directly to the reader, sharing something very private that one would only tell those that were very close to them.
In conclusion, the first person point of view directly affects how much of Celie’s story gets through to the reader since each viewpoint allows certain liberties while limiting others.