|
|
The Color Purple Alice Walker
Letters 1–10
Summary
The Color Purple opens with Celie's memory
of her father's command that she stay quiet about his abuse of her.
The rest of the novel is composed of letters, and we begin with
the first of many private letters Celie writes to God. In her first
letter, Celie asks for guidance because she does not understand
what is happening to her. Only fourteen, Celie is already pregnant
with her second child—the result of rape and incest. Alphonso, Celie's
father, has turned to Celie for sexual gratification because Celie's
mother is ill and can no longer endure Alphonso's sexual demands.
Celie's mother dies. Celie writes that Alphonso stole
Celie's first baby while she was sleeping and killed it in the woods,
and she believes he will kill her second baby as well. However,
Alphonso does not kill the second baby, and Celie suspects that
he instead sold the child to a married couple. Celie is left with
her breasts filled with milk for no one.
From Celie's fourth letter to God, we learn that Alphonso
has brought home a new wife, though this marriage does not end the physical
and sexual abuse Celie endures. Alphonso beats Celie for winking
at a boy in church, though she may have just had something stuck
in her eye. Later, he beats her again for dressing “trampy.”
Celie and her younger sister, Nettie, learn that a man,
to whom Celie refers only as Mr. ______, has shown an interest in
marrying Nettie. The man is recently widowed because his first wife
was murdered by her lover. Alphonso's new wife tells Celie and Nettie
that Mr. ______ also had a lover outside of marriage, a woman named Shug
Avery. The girls find a photograph of Shug, and her bright, glamorous
face captivates Celie, who has never seen anyone like her.
Alphonso refuses to hand Nettie over to Mr. ______, stating
that she is far too young and inexperienced to marry a man with
children. Alphonso wants Nettie to continue her schooling and offers the
man Celie instead. Alphonso claims that though Celie is ugly, a liar,
and “spoiled twice,” she is older and hardworking and owns her own
cow, which she could bring into the marriage.
After brooding over the offer for a few months, Mr. ______ makes
up his mind to take Celie. Celie desperately wants to stay in school,
but Alphonso says she is too dumb to learn anything. Celie spends
her wedding day bandaging a wound from a rock Mr. ______'s son throws
at her, untangling her screaming stepdaughters' hair, and cooking
dinner. Celie spends a joyless wedding night with Mr. ______ on
top of her, all the while worrying about Nettie's safety.
While in town one day, Celie catches sight of a young
girl who she thinks may be her lost daughter. The girl closely resembles
Celie, especially her eyes. The little girl's mother talks kindly
with Celie after she follows them into a fabric store, where Celie
learns that the mother calls her daughter Olivia, the same name
Celie gave her own daughter and embroidered on her diapers before
the infant was taken away. In the store, the racist shopkeeper treats
Olivia's mother poorly, making her buy thread she does not want
and tearing off her new fabric without bothering to measure it.
Analysis
The epistolary, or letter-writing, form of The
Color Purple resembles a diary, since Celie tells her story
through private letters that she writes to God. Therefore, Celie
narrates her life story with complete candor and honesty. As a poor
African-American woman in rural Georgia in the 1930s
and a victim of domestic abuse, Celie is almost completely voiceless
and disenfranchised in everyday society. However, Celie's letters
enable her to break privately the silence that is normally imposed
upon her.
Celie's confessional narrative is reminiscent of African-American slave
narratives from the nineteenth century. These early slave narratives,
which took the form of song, dance, storytelling, and other arts,
ruptured the silence imposed on the black community. Yet, unlike
Celie's letters, these slave narratives employed codes, symbols,
humor, and other methods to hide their true intent. Slaves took these
measures to prevent slave owners from discovering the slaves' ability
to communicate, articulate, and reflect on their unhappiness, but
Celie takes no such protective measures.
Celie's letters, though completely candid and confessional,
are sometimes difficult to decipher because Celie's ability to narrate
her life story is highly limited. When Celie's cursing mother asks
who fathered Celie's baby, Celie, remembering Alphonso's command
to keep quiet, says the baby is God's because she does not know
what else to say. Similarly, Celie does not know what to say about
her mother's death, her abuse, or her stolen babies. Celie knows
how to state the events plainly, but often does not know how to
interpret them. Despite the abuses she endures, Celie has little
consciousness of injustice and shows little or no anger.
Walker's use of Celie's own voice, however underdeveloped, allows
Walker to tell the history of black women in the rural South in
a sympathetic and realistic way. Unlike a historian's perspective, which
can be antiseptic and overly analytical, Celie's letters offer a powerful
first-person account of the institutions of racism and sexism. Celie's
simple narrative brings us into her isolated world with language
that reveals both pain and detached numbness: “My momma dead. She
die screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at me.”
Like her voice, Celie's faith is prominent but underdeveloped. Celie
relies heavily on God as her listener and source of strength, but she
sometimes blurs the distinction between God's authority and that
of Alphonso. She confesses that God, rather than Alphonso, killed
her baby, and she never makes any association between the injustice
she experiences in her life and the ability of God to overturn or
prevent this injustice.
Help |
Feedback |
Make a request |
Report an error |
Send to a friend
|
|
