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The Color Purple And Ovid's Metamorphoses

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In the heart-breaking novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker, we read about the protagonist and narrator, Celie who is a victim of rape and abuse. She is caught in this vicious patriarchal society where women have no voice. In this novel we see many similarities to Ovid’s archetypal rape narrative. I will discuss the similarities in full detail and explain how the men in the female protagonists’ lives hurt and betrayed them. I will be looking at the book The Color Purple as well as Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
When looking at The Color Purple we read about Celie’s tragic life, and you feel her pain and suffering by just reading the words on the page. Her father beats and rapes her and by the looks of things, it seems that she is forever doomed with eternal heartache, abuse and rape. It seems that she will never be happy. She is controlled and manipulated by the men in her life that she should be able to trust. Her father Alphonso has complete control over her and uses her to his advantage and she suffers from it.
Alice Walker vividly portrays the sad but apparent reality of life in the black rural communities of America during the mid-twentieth century. It is a time when the impacts of slavery are still …show more content…

Rendered unable to speak because of her injuries, Philomela wove a tapestry that told her story and had it sent to Procne. When Procne receives the tapestry she murders her son that she had with Tereus and cooks him. At dinner, she serves him his own son without him knowing and he eats him, bit by bit. The sisters present the boy’s head and he tries to kill them, but they flee. They pray to the gods to turn them into birds and the gods transformed Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale. Coincidentally, in nature, the female nightingale is mute and only the male of the species sings. But she finds her voice without saying a word, and she gets her vengeance when Tereus is turned into a

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