Molliwop's Blog

1995. Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using characters who are alienated by from that culture or society because of gender, race, class, or creed. Choose a novel or play in which such a character plays a significant role and show how that character reveals the surrounding society’s assumptions or moral values.

In The Color Purple by Alice Walker,  there are many different characters that are alienated by the culture they were born into. Each character; Celie, Shug, Sophia, and even Olivia’s friend, are great examples of  women who are suppressed by there own culture African or African American.

The character of Celie is the most noticed in reference to alienation from ones culture. Celie an African American woman in the late 1920’s, early 1930’s, experiences most of her alienation from the men in her life. Because she is a woman, the men in her life give no thought to her feelings or the fact that she is a person. Mr.____ belittles her with every word he utters, he treats hear like a slave instead of his wife, giving her orders which were usually followed by a beating. The fact that she was a woman had other consequences too, because her so-called father felt she was too ugly, he deemed that she was not worthy of an education and would be better of some mans wife. This was no different from Olivia’s friend in Africa who couldn’t learn because of her gender. It seems that in these cultures all women were good for was sex and doing household chores.

Alice Walker does show that some women didn’t take the slave treatment to kindly, by the usage of the character Sophia. Sophia was confident and her action were consided to be blatenet

Although the Color Purple was produced as a radio play and broadway play after publication Ive chosen to talk about its film adaptation staring, Danny Glover, Woopy Goldberg, Margret Avery, and Oprah Winfrey. like any film adaption of a novel there are always diffrences between them, usually subtle like the age of Olivia or the leaving out of certain scenes. When i watched the color purple i admit it moved me to the point of tears a couple of times, and i feel it does the book justice.

Below ive embeded a couple of my favorite parts from the movie.

The majority of the entries have become a blur and only the most shocking and memorable stick out now. The most graphic and startling of the entries was Celies discovery of her own sexual awareness aided by the ever flamboyant character of Shug Avery, Mr._____ long time mistress. Through their relationship I’ve noticed that Celie is actually in love with Shug Avery and that its more that infatuation. Although it may seem lesbian, for some reason I just don’t feel it is. Also id like to talk about the character Sophia, Harpo’s wife because her character is the exact opposite of Celie’s. She is a strong woman who wont bow down to the men in her life or be subdued by racism.  She is the first person to influence Celie to “Bash Mr.____ head in, and think about heaven later.”

In my opinion Shug and Sophia are the closest things to sisters Celie has after her depart from Nettie as teens. Their actions influence her to finally show here strength in the climax of the novel when Celie has had enough of Mr.____  and leaves finding feedom in life. “

Also I noticed the discovery that her sister is alive the entries in the book are to Nettie and no longer to god. The letters from Nettie are in serted between every new entry and even after she gets the telegragh that her sister is drowned she still writes and receives letters. I feel this shows the necessity for some one to talk to an express her feelings.

Every other grading period my teacher assigns a project called a book blog where we pick a book and read it posting our thoughts and feelings about the text. This time I picked the Color Purple by Alice Walker. As I read the first couple of entries in the book the only feelings I could utter were sadness and pity as the main character Celie was trust into the harsh of the world so different than my own. Each entry was a prayer to god asking for a sign, and it gave Celie an outlet for her feelings. Reading through the pages it was hard not to notice the lowliness of the African American woman in the early 1900’s and how her position in society affected her personality an demeanor. I was only about 60 or 70 pages in when I saw a spark of repellion and stenght in celie as She spit into a glass of water she’d given to Old Mr._____. Just typing that last sentence reminded me of something. In the novel Celie for some reason cannot remember the names of men, for some reason or another she refers to them all as Mr._____. Then I noticed she could remember all the women’s names, and so the lack of memory must have been linked to a fear of men and the power they had over her or the violent things they had done to her.

Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatoton, Georgia.  She is an author of novels and poetry, and was a political activist in the civil rights movement and still helps in the anti war efforts in the Middle East. She has recieved many awards and honors for her work including the  Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, The Color Purple.

The Color Purple was first published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Co. in 1982 and in 1983 recieved the Pulitzer Prize, and the American Book Award.