The Color Purple Analytical Essay

With Shug’s financial and emotional support in the beginning of her business venture, Celie is able to realize that she has talents that help her connect to others and gives her a sense of control in her life. In fact, she has a huge influence among her employees, who support her and view her as a role model, succeeding in the world despite all odds. In the end, it is Celie’s interest in creating a business that places her firmly in control of herself, her financial well being and a purpose in everyday life, while giving her the ability to connect with women who understand the difficult path to independence. All of these factors, as well as the overwhelming support of friends, help Celie feel proud, confident and happy with what she has achieved in life. With a huge step towards independence, Celie stops writing letters to God. Throughout the novel, Celie writes God to ask for guidance, will to live and help in difficult times, but now that she has interests that empower her, she addresses her letters to someone else. In a powerful letter to her sister, Celie writes, “I don’t write to God no more. I write to you” (Walker, The Colour Purple 192). Now writing to Nettie, Celie expresses she no longer needs a higher power to pray to, all she needs are the people in her life to tell her stories to. Celie connects with others through her business and her everyday life now that she is not

Celie’s sister, Nettie, has also found her children that she had with her step-father. Celie is a completely different person at the end of the book. She has learned to love life and never to go back to the way it was before. It

Celie is abused and raped by her Pa who takes away her children after they’re born. Eventually, Pa marries Celie off to a man who is just as abusive as Pa. Celie’s new husband Mr simply marries Celie to take care of his four children, look after of his house, and work in his fields. Celie starts her letter letting us know that her mother has died, but she also gives us some information on what happened before her mother passed away. Shug plans to leave but, in an attempt to keep her from going, Celie tells her that Albert beats her. Shug promises not to leave until he stops. Shug also learns that Celie has never enjoyed sex. Shug tries to educate Celie about how to get pleasure from sex, but it is soon clear that Celie feels nothing for Albert because she is attracted to women. Later, Celie experiences her first sexual pleasure with Shug.

There are many racial components in this novel that are easy to point out. These take place in the American South and also in Africa. It starts with the way that all the black men and women are treated at the start of the book. The main character’s real father was a successful store owner who was black. This man was hanged for a reason that is known only as him being a successful black man. All the characters that we are introduced to in this book by Celie are exploited by the fact that they are black. Sophia is beat up and jailed for her refusal to want to work for a white women. Of course she stood up for herself and the white element tried to tell her where her place was. There is also an intra racial theme that starts at the beginning

Celie becomes a different and stronger women towards the end of the book compared to when the book started. “I think I can’t even remember the last time I felt mad, I say. I used to git mad at my mammy cause she put a lot of work on me. Then I see how sick she is. Couldn’t stay mad at her. Couldn’t be mad at my daddy cause he my daddy. Bible say, Honor father and mother no matter what. Then after while every time I got mad, or start to feel mad, I got sick. Felt like throwing up. Terrible feeling. Then I start to feel nothing at all” (Walker, Alice). Celie has been hurt so much she has basically become numb to life. She never gets mad because she knows there are more difficult problems in life. She used to get mad at her mother and father but now realizes she should not do that. “I have daydreamed not fairy tales but of falling swords, of putting guns to my heart or head, and of slashing my wrists with a razor” (Alice Walker). After Alice kept having those daydreams, she then later went to Spelman College on a scholarship. Celie and Alice both end up living a better life than the past and getting what they deserve. They learn that there are worse situations in the world and they have both been through one of those events and that they should never take anything for granted.

Being raped by her step father, Celie’s first impression was not only forced on her but blurred. By her step father forcing making love to her she is imprinted that love is unreal and only used for lust’s purposes. As she grows older her thoughts of love do not get better for she is married off to a man who likes her sister Nettie. This man, Mister, gives Celie a loveless marriage where he does not even try to like her. Starting to lose her faith in love, thinking she will never be able to have it Celie ends up finding love in the most unexpected relationship. Celie falls in love with a women lounge singer named Shug, Shug is a friend of Mister’s and comes often to their home where Celie starts to develop feelings for her. Now have found love on earth Celie starts to regain her love for God, her life has been very difficult causing her to start to lose her faith, but once she sees how God was working in her life she starts to grow in her faith. God helped her find Shug, escape from a loveless marriage, find her sister, and know that the children she had with her step father were not killed but are being taken care of by a nice

Having something that is rudimentary and seen as an ordinary object may hold no value to people around you, but holds a deeper meaning when it can change you as a person and your life holistically. In Alice Walker’s, The Color Purple, Celie the protagonist undergoes trials and tribulations and along her journey she discovers objects that shape her to be a stronger and more independent women at the end of the novel. The symbolic objects consist of the pants, the quilt, and the letters. During the early twentieth century in the United States, it wasn’t the norm for women to wear pants.

Celie is immediately introduced to the audience as a young fourteen year old girl with no ambition and many questions about her purpose in the world. She questions God by constantly writing him letters. She believes she is a good girl and does not understand why so much pain exists in her world. She lives with a daily fear of her father and with the constant reminder that “[she] better not never tell nobody but God. It 'd kill

At this point in the novel, Celie's grammar and vocabulary start to improve; this reflects her life and how she is gaining her own voice and her own sense of observing what is happening around her. This contributes to the theme greatly by how it is a turning point in Celie, has seeing that she has someone in her life besides God that is there for her and a part of her family. This is symbolic towards the fact that she does not have herself to talk to anymore, Nettie will be hearing what she has to say and listen to what is happening to her life, rather than the diary that she wrote to

“ I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl” (Walker 1). She is told constantly how ugly she is or how bad she is, but in reality she is just a scared little girl who is being forced into things that she has never wanted. Walker takes this little girl who hasn’t had much schooling, and transforms her into someone many readers can relate with. Even as Celie is growing and becoming more of a woman she never truly had a childhood that young girls are supposed to have. She grew up taking care of her brothers and sisters. And then her step-father sold her to Mr. and she took care of his children for him. She had her childhood ripped for hands on the first night her step-father stepped into her room to get a

The Color Purple by Alice Walker tells the story of Celie, a fourteen year old girl, growing up in a small town shortly after slavery has been abolished. At the start of the book, Celie’s mother is terribly ill and unable to even leave her own bed. Typically, one would rightfully assume that the husband and children would do everything in their power to keep her happy in her time of need, but alternatively it is the polar opposite. None of her many children batted an eye at the sight of her frail, dying body due to what their father, or Pa, had told them. As a child and into adulthood, she was often reprimanded for being ugly and illiterate, unlike her younger sister and practically best friend, Nettie.

The path Celie takes to reach the point of self-actualization is quite different from Nettie’s steps, as they had completely different life experiences. Celie’s spark of self fulfillment begins much later in her lifetime than Nettie. At a young age, Celie is harshly treated from young age, which spurs self hatred and no respect for herself. Despite these emotions, Celie still feels the yearning to be needed when she becomes the mother for Mr.____’s children. Despite the constant rudeness presented by the children, Celie treats them kindly and does not scorn them for acting out. After Harpo, the eldest, was not given permission to marry the woman he loves, Celie comforts him in his time of vulnerability. The following quote shows the developed relationship between Harpo and Celie: “Harpo tell me all his love business now. His mind on Sophia Butler day and night” (30). She is able to fulfill basic philosophical needs, the first step of Maslow’s hierarchy through the relationship she has with Mr.____’s children. When Shug Avery begins to stay with

In the beginning of the novel, readers find out that Celie is consistently abused and told she is ugly. She believes that the only way she can survive is to make herself invisible. Celie’s mother dies of illness and she is left to live with just Alphonso, her abusive father. Celie begins writing letters to God as an outlet from her dreadful life. Celie describes being raped and accepts the fact that she cannot do anything to stop what is happening to her. Celie appears to be weak and unable to fight for the proper life that she deserves. Alphonso then arranges for her to marry Albert who also rapes and harms Celie. One day Kate, one of Albert’s sisters comes to visit and she sees how terribly Celie is treated. Celie writes, “‘You got to fight them, Celie.’ she say. ‘I can’t do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself.’ I don’t say nothing. I think bout Nettie, dead. She

Celie from a young age is a victim of incest at the hands of her stepfather, Pa. She is not only dispossessed of her children as they are taken away at birth by Pa, but she is also dispossessed of self. Like Sethe, Celie is denied the outlet of motherhood. Celie sacrifices herself to Pa, as a means of saving her sister, Nettie, from the sexual exploitation that she soon would have encountered. Celie in this act becomes the mother figure to Nettie, as sisters become mothers to each other. Her body becomes a sacrificial lamb that gives Nettie salvation from the sexual plight and violation faced by black women. With the dispossession of her children and all the events that accumulate, Celie faces the psychosocial trauma of deferred

Walker introduces the reader to the protagonist, Celie, through a series of letters. In these letters the reader finds Celie amidst her mother’s death. The author chooses to address her letters to God, giving Celie a greater willpower to survive. Celie’s upbringing gave her maternal authority; as seen through the multiple maternal roles she played through the novel. Her mother’s death forces her to step up and fill a, painful role revealing her inner strength and ability to remain optimistic.The full