preview

Color Purple Deceit

Decent Essays

In The Color Purple, written by Alice Walker, uses a feminine heroin named Celie in the Southeastern corner of the United States. Through Celie, Alice Walker portrays the thematic subject of sin and deceit by explaining her life through a series of letters. Although her life was very difficult, she was able to find a way to get through it and become stronger.
The first sin that happened to Celie was the rape that occurred when she was fourteen. James Hall, author of the article “Towards a map of mis(sed) reading: The presence of absence in The Color Purple”, wrote “The victim of incest, Celie had told her mother upon the birth of her child that it was ‘God's’’ which is another act of sin that was committed in the story. In the bible, Moses …show more content…

On pages 174-175, “This would not do. [...] dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night and hanged,” and Nettie is explaining the story of their father to Celie. There father was lynched which falls under “Thou shalt not murder.” the fact that he was murdered because he had a business that was doing better than most of the white men in the area and they did not like that. Another sin is hatred which seems to rear its ugly head a lot. Linda Selzer, who wrote the article “Race and domesticity in The Color Purple”, said “But if the conclusion to The Color Purple suggests that feelings of racial identity can transcend national boundaries, the novel provides no such reassurances that the boundaries between races can be successfully negotiated,” which is basically saying that no matter what is going on or where it is, there will always be racial tension and boundaries set up for the other races to separate them all. In fact the hatred runs so deep that Selzer states, “[...] she [Nettie] is trained by a missionary society that is "run by white people" who "didn't say a thing about caring about Africa, but only about duty," showing that even the white missionaries seem to show a kind for hatred for the Africans and it seems a bit ludicrous …show more content…

Hall says, “The victim of incest, Celie had told her mother upon the birth of her child that it was ‘God's,’” when really it was a man that gave her the baby. She seems to be trying to reference the Holy Spirit when it gave the Virgin Mary Jesus Christ which can be taken as a double blasphemy. Hall even mentions that, “Her protagonist has (in the first two pages) spoken the unspoken (the "I am") and radically revised the mythic story of Christ's birth. Celie's path to selfhood involves the evaporation of patriarchal Christianity,” meaning Celie is pretty much breaking down the patriarchal christianity style that was going on at the time. What’s even stranger however is the fact that Hall recognizes the fact that Celie seems to be portraying her husband as a god-like figure as he states, “ Her husband, in a further reference to the Old Testament God, is also unnameable,” which is absolutely true. Usually when God would talk to someone in the Old Testament and they asked for His name because they did not know who he was, He would say something along the lines of “I am that I am” which is really mysterious yet authoritative in a way. The sin just seems to keep piling

Get Access