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
Celie in The Color Purple has struggled since the very beginning because of the poor treatment she has received by men. Being raped by her father Fonso, Celie becomes pregnant and
Life is a rollercoaster filled with ups and downs. Left turns, right turns, and sometimes completely upside down loop de loops. The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a story about a colored woman named Celie who writes letters to God while living through extreme oppression and abuse. Celie eventually overcomes her oppressors by finding her purpose in life through friendship, love, hope, and change in faith. Discovering hope, love, and faith leads to a fulfilling life through difficult times.
Similarly in The Color Purple, Celie struggles to fit into the society she was born into, suffering from low self-esteem and very little self-worth throughout the entirety of the book. This is evidenced in letter seventeen when Celie explains she “don’t feel nothing for them” and how they “don’t love” her “neither”, after suffering many brutalities it is as though she is dead inside, unable to love or be loved. Having noticed she does not sign her name at the end of her letters, is quite unusual. Most people would find pride in signing their name, especially when addressing God, reinforcing the idea that she has no confidence in the person she is or wishes to be. Being a victim of the ‘double oppression’, her ‘Pa’s’ anger and hostility towards the treatment of black people at the time, meant that Celie faced countless acts of extreme violence throughout her life. In letter five Celie explains her fathers ‘reasoning’ in giving her one of many ‘beatings’ after reportedly winking at a boy in church. Celie explains she
In this myth, these two get married but “Juno is not there to bless the rite, nor Hymen, nor the Graces” (134). It is important to note that Juno is the equivalent to the Greek goddess Hera who governs marriage, children and family. Similarly, Hymen’s symbol is the bridal torch and the Graces goddesses of beauty and fertility. Because these marriage divinities are absent from this marriage, the “Furies make their bed” (134) and both their “union and parenthood are haunted” (134). One can infer, that Juno, Hymen, and the Graces took this personally and thus punished Procne and Tereus by withhold success for their marriage.
she become so used to not fighting back or even crying. Celie was always a
What can be sweeter than a mother's unconditional love? In most nuclear families, the family members interact with each other to support and construct a home with values of love and prosperity. However, not every home can be categorized as loving and bountiful as certain circumstances can cause an unfortunate crisis that impacts family members to change how they perceive one another. Revenge, being an approach to handle some circumstances, is a very common topic in Greek mythology which, leads the characters to take justice into their own hands by any means necessary— to restore their honor. In Ovid's poem the Metamorphoses, tales of grandeur and unpleasant fates are retold in sequence, revealing heroic people, lessons, and origins from stories
The Color Purple revolves around the life of Celie, a young black woman growing up in the poverty-ridden South. In order to find herself and gain independence, Celie must deal with all manner of abuse, including misogyny, racism and poverty. When she is a young girl of just 14, Celie is sexually assaulted by a man she believes is her father. She has two children by her rapist, both of who
In one word, the author Ovid describes the overall content and theme of his poem with the word “Metamorphoses” in the title. Some relative synonyms of this word among others are; altar, change, mutate, develop, and reshape (metamorphose). But Ovid goes further to describe the theme within the first two lines of the poem.
Philomel is the princess of Athens and sister to Pronce who is the wife of Tereus, the king of Thrace. After an incident which involved Philomel and Tereus, Tereus raped Philomel and warned her not to tell a soul. To make sure of this, Tereus cut out Philomel’s tongue, yet she managed to still tell her sister Pronce. So through revenge, they fed Tereus’ brother to him and all this mess resulted in all three get turned into birds. Philomel into a nightingale, Pronce into a swallow, and Tereus into a sea hawk. One thing that is kept in mind in this myth is the fact that Philomel never really got the chance to tell more people of what happened to her due to her tongue being cut out and being turned into a bird made
The Color Purple is a very moving and spiritual book. It takes a women who has nothing to speak of going for her and who is a victim to the world, and it takes her to a place where she is a strong individual who can voice her own opinions about things without people telling her what to do. She gets incredible power that grows inside her throughout the book. It is only fully released near the end of the book when her sister, Nettie, is about to come home. As for her, Celie, she just survives during her life, and takes what is handed to her. Until one fateful day when a woman named Shrug comes into the picture and comes to stay with them while she is recovering from a disease. From that day on, Celie could see that some women stand up for
Throughout the story, several women were extremely mistreated by men. The oppression of women is unmistakable in The Color Purple. It is particularly exposed in association between Celie and her farther. At a very young age Celie was subjected to oppression. Celie was raped repeatedly and pregnant twice by her stepfather and was told to keep quiet about it. "You better not never tell nobody but God, It'd kill your mammy" (stepfather). I believe this is when Celie began to fear men for most of her life. This act towards any woman is very demeaning.
Celie is not a typical protagonist. In Alice Walker's The Color Purple, the main character Celie is an ugly, poor girl who is severely lacking in self-confidence. However, Celie transforms throughout the course of the novel and manages to realize herself as a colorful, beautiful, and proud human being. Celie becomes a powerful individual.
Celie has been emotionally abused by multiple characters in The Color Purple. Celie was frequently told she was an undesirable, ugly woman only meant to be used by other. She believed this, leading her to hate her physical appearance, and her self. After being impregnated by her father Celie was forced to quit attending school which broke her down even more. She began to feel very stupid and illiterate. The day her sister Nettie was forced to leave her side had destroyed her emotionally. Nettie was the only person she loved, other than her children, and the only person she felt loved her back. Celie was also given away unwilling as a wife. to Mr.______ who treated her terribly. While living with
Though The Color Purple is a historical novel, it never refers to any factual events. Because of this, we presumably follow Celie through thirty or forty years of her life, from the age of fourteen up until her hair is gray. The setting of the novel is primarily rural Georgia in the early twentieth century. As a poor black woman in the rural south, Celie’s bad treatment is largely ignored which was the norm in this time period. Celie leaves Georgia to live in Memphis with Shug. There, Celie lives a life of luxury and empowerment. Living a poor, downtrodden life in the South, Celie had never stopped to consider her African heritage until Nettie sends
In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Celie leads a life filled with abuse at the hands of the most important men in her life. As result of the women who surround and help her, Celie becomes stronger and overcomes the abuse she experienced. The three most influential women in Celie’s life are her sister Nettie, her daughter-in-law Sofia, and the singer Shug Avery. These are the women who lead Celie out of her shell and help her turn from a shy, withdrawn woman to someone who was free to speak her mind and lead her own independent life.