In the novel, the color purple, Alice Walker said “A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody’s children, I said, and I am something”, clearly supporting the idea that self-actualization is independent from gender roles. It’s this sense of self-actualization and how it leads to empowerment that the minor characters in the color purple consistently conveyed throughout the novel. Minor characters aren’t minor at all; in fact, they play major roles in leading various areas in the thematic development, symbolism and adding dimension to the main characters.
Harpo struggles to fit into stereotypical gender roles established by society’s views and enforced by his father. At the beginning of the novel, Harpo tries to emulate his father's abusive tendencies in an attempt to make his wife obey his rules. When Harpo first introduced Sofia to his father and it was time for Sofia to leave, “Harpo stands up to leave too but she says Naw, Harpo, you stay here. He sort of hang there between them a while then he sit down again (Walker, 31). It’s this hesitance that speaks volumes about Harpo’s internal conflict. This is the first quote that introduces and indicates his uncertainty and confusion about his role(s) as a stereotypical man during the time of segregation-not only among whites and African Americans but also among males and females.
In the beginning of the book and a little towards the middle the main character, Dove Alderman. She has said multiple times in the book she has different perspectives on people. She admits herself different from the others because she get’s along with one of the pickers that are black and they were some what segregated then from living in white neighborhoods and the blacks living in blacks neighborhoods or blacks working on whites farms. Dove is smart, brave, flirty, independent and impulsive. In the book she has never judged people’s skin color. She seems to find them for their
Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.
The most interesting book I have read in the past year was “Still Alice,” written by Lisa Genova. This book narrated the life of Alice Howland, a successful Harvard psychology professor who loses herself to Alzheimer’s disease. Alice is an intelligent, ambitious woman with a loving husband, John, and their three children. Initially, Alice starts off forgetting minor details, such as words during her presentations or where she might place some of her belongings. Dismissing it, Alice goes for a run in her town square where she’s run for several years. She suddenly finds herself lost and panics because she could not figure out how to get home. Eventually, she finds out she’s diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer’s and she is left to deal with her family and work life as well as do as much as she can each day before she loses herself completely.
Honesty influences the lives of many people no matter religion, race, age, and has no boundaries towards the choices we make honesty can be brutal, rather than saving face to protect the ones you love honesty can hurt but it is usually always better. One lie can affect our outcomes, and these choices we make in life could have drastic consequences that could affect us in the end and make life very difficult. Celie and Nick follow the same journey pattern to better themselves, but with different realizations that prove the only life worth having is an honest one.
Here, Louie Zamperini who never gave up, never quit, and never stopped fighting. Louie, as a young boy was a thief, never really cared to listen to anybody. Laura Hillenbrand put much detail into Unbroken. She’d call him and talk to him about him and everything he had gone through.
Lisa Genova, the author of Still Alice, a heartbreaking book about a 50-year-old woman's sudden diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in Biopsychology and holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University. She is a member of the Dementia Advocacy, Support Network International and Dementia USA and is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer's Association. Genova's work with Alzheimer's patients has given her an understanding of the disorder and its affect not only on the patient, but on their friends and family as well (Simon and Schuster, n.d.).
Whether Walker wrote the story to challenge the views of the readers, or they were her own ideas of breaking stereotypes, her narration and characters reflect the redefinition of gender norms in The Color Purple.
The book A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park gives a fascinating story of a real life personal journey. Slava, the main character, was born and for 11 years raised in Sudan in 1985 during the civil war. Slava was a member of a successful family, Slava’s father was the village judge and owned many cattle. Slava was able to go to school, that was not common in Sudan. Slava was at school , his village was under attack and he needed to leave to get safety behind a bush so he would not be hurt , Slava ran to a bush get safety. That dash was the call to Slava’s personal journey. Slava would have venture through three (Sudan,Ethiopia,Kenya) countries , without his family and on foot . The character Slava in a Long walk to water was changed by his personal journey, he had to be independent, not having his family disrupted his daily life style, and was compelled to help the people of Sudan
In the play “A Raisin in the Sun” written by Lorraine Hansberry, she is able to take us to place to see what it was like for an African American family to survive in the mid-twentieth century. The play details how the main characters are going through an evolving social and economic position, as well as the evolving gender roles. Hansberry uses the characterization of Beneatha, Ruth, and Walter in order to show the expectations and assigned gender roles for the characters in the story. In short, Beneatha is depicted as a woman who is challenging gender norms and expectations upheld by her family, whereas Ruth is seen as an example of a submissive housewife fulfilling her expected duties. Using “A Raisin in the Sun,” as well as “Marxists
In On The Run, Alice Goffman focuses on a particular group of young Black men living in a poor neighborhood, struggling to live a “good” and “fair” life. These boys from 6th street are segregated from resources that would be found in more economically advanced neighborhoods. A “resource” that they do run into more than often is over policing in their neighborhood. As they are disproportionately targeted for arrest to fill quotas, this constant behavior and events deemed as a norm (even little children play a game about cops catching and being overly aggressive to Black boys), hinders their process at advancing within American society. Systematic oppression against a minority group slows and puts racial tension progress at a standstill, as they are continued victims of larger forces. What truly works against them once locked up and released, is that they were not given a chance based on race, now it becomes based on race plus their criminal history. People in such situations are left with one option, in order for them to survive and provide for their families, they must do it through illegal activity. Locking people up and returning then into the same environment which had limited resources does nothing to solve larger powers at play. Laws and documents may exist that describe an “equal” and “fair” society, but without action, words seem to hold less value. The Declaration of Independence, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are both documents meant to symbolize
“Oh look, it’s a terrorist!” These were the words that Yasmin Seweid confronted as white supremacists harassed her for wearing a hijab – a symbol in an aspect of her culture that they disagreed with. Someone’s perception of the world around them significantly depends on aspects of their own culture. Moreover, the cultural heritage of one individual vastly differs from that of the next; that difference is what forms the diverse viewpoints of society. In addition to shaping one’s perspective, culture sculpts the very beliefs and behavior that meld together to form a person. Instances of culture directly impacting a person’s behaviors and beliefs epitomize in Pico Iyer’s “Where Worlds Collide” and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”.
“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker is a series a letters by and to the main character, Celie. The book begins with fourteen year old Celie writing to God about her father raping her and taking away her children. After Celie's mother dies, Celie focuses on protecting her sister, Nettie, from her father's sexual advances and encourages her to run away. A widower called “Mr. __” wants to marry Nettie, but their father rejects him. Eventually Celie marries Mr. __, who later is called Albert, and her living conditions do not improve at all. Celie becomes infatuated with Shug Avery, a blues singer who is her husband's mistress. Years later, Celie helps nurse Shug back to health. Eventually, they fall in love with each other. Meanwhile, Nettie
Alice Walker has been an activist for most of her life. Walker travels the world to help fight for the poor and the oppressed. She also stands for the revolutionaries who want to transform the world for the better. She is a defender of not only human rights but the rights of animals as well. In her essay “Am I Blue” she discovers the feelings of a horse named Blue. The essay is meant to show a different side of animals and show the audience the human-like traits that horses have. She compares the oppression of the African Americans and American Indians to the way we now treat animals.
“The Color Purple” written by Alice Walker is a story highlighting the values and ideals of the culture and society in the beginning of the 20th century. During this time period certain women were alienated from society due to their clothes, beliefs, and their actions. Although every woman in this book was alienated from society the extent of alienation differed depending on how their words and actions were perceived by society.
The women of the late sixties, although some are older than others, in Alice Walker’s fiction that exhibit the qualities of the developing, emergent model are greatly influenced through the era of the Civil Rights Movement. Motherhood is a major theme in modern women’s literature, which examines as a sacred, powerful, and spiritual component of the woman’s life. Alice Walker does not choose Southern black women to be her major protagonists only because she is one, but because she had discovered in the tradition and history they collectively experience an understanding of oppression that has been drawn from them a willingness to reject the principle and to hold what is difficult. Walker’s most developed character, Meridian, is a person