What Is The Significance Of Celie's Speech As Black Folk Language In The Color Purple

Celie practically struggled for happiness her whole existence. Her father sold her to a man who had no intent of loving or caring for her. Celies’ husband whom she refers to as Mr. physically and verbally abused her. Mr. felt that the only way to keep a woman in check was to beat her and he did just that throughout the movie. Like any woman would though the abuse Celie lost herself and respect for herself. Living with Mr. was a life full of darkness and hatred. Life with her husband was no better life than life with her stepfather. It took years for Celie to become brave enough to fight back for what she accept as true and gain understanding of how to convey amusement and have little outlook on life. After years of abuse, Celie no longer was afraid of Mr. She no longer cared for her husband or the

Told through a series of letters to God, Celie shares her story. Impregnated twice by her father, Celie’s children are taken away

According to Harold Bloom, “For Celie, the practice of addressing God simply reaffirms her solitude; she is essentially writing to herself” (Bloom, and Williams 77-88). This submissive practice nonetheless carries over onto her daily life, and ensues until her relationship with Shug Avery strengthens. After Celie begins to experience a spiritual, emotional, and sexual awakening as a result of this bond, her letters reflect her newfound emotional capacity. Bloom enforces this ideal, claiming, “Shug is the route through which Nettie's letters are restored” (Bloom, and Williams 77-88). With the figurative resurrection of her sister through Shug’s support, Celie’s power of voice grows. She begins to think for herself and express her thoughts more vividly, claiming, "My life stop when I left home, I think. But then I think again. It stop with Mr._______ maybe, but start up again with Shug" (Walker 85). The audience, who was Celie’s only recluse for thought, views her becoming more verbal and opinionated in reality as well; for instance, during her final standoff with Mr._______, she exclaims, "You a lowdown dog is what's wrong, I say. It's time to leave you and enter into Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need” (Walker 207). Celie, therefore, has discovered the act of standing up for herself as a person. Nettie’s letters possess a distinct voice as well, and the discovery and instigation of communication between the two sisters liberates the voice which

Celie's transformation from Mr. ____'s slave into an independent women is successful thanks to two strong women that become role models for Celie in her everyday life; Shug Avery and Sofia. Sofia is a role model in a more unconscious way for Celie then Shug is. Sofia's whole appearance and behaviour is proud, she lets no one sit on her and Celie is, at first, jealous of Sofia's self-confidence and tries to destroy it by giving her husband Harpo the advice to beat her to make her obedient; "I think about this when Harpo ast me what he ought to do to make her mind. [---] I think bout how every time I jump when Mr. _____ call me, she [Sofia] look surprise. And like she pity me. Beat her. I say"2. When this does not work, Celie realises that Sofia is someone to become more alike, not someone to destroy.

Celie is mostly uneducated until her sister helps her learn how to read and write so she can write her letters when she is absent as she suspects she will need to send her away from Albert. This displays Celie’s will to improve herself even through the harsh times she goes through and is able to keep her composure. Celie protects her sister Nettie from the fate she had and allows for Nettie to have a better life compared to hers. Celie in the novel evolves into a character that is strong, caring, and the ability to

As Nettie receives opportunities Celie could never fathom, their relationship comes to a halt. Celie stops receiving letters from her sister and is left to take care of her husband’s obnoxious children from a previous marriage, and is verbally/physically abused on a daily basis by both her husband and his children. Celie’s husband has a torrent affair with Shug Avery, a blues singer with a practical mentality who does not endure any mistreatment from anyone, regardless of their gender. When Shug Avery falls into Celie’s care, Shug Avery teaches Celie a thing or two about self-confidence and the strength she must find within herself to stand up to her husband. Towards the end of the novel, Shug Avery encourages Celie to leave her husband and move with her to Memphis, where she can escape the pain of her past and for once in her life be happy.

Celie is able to accept her past and establish a clear vision of herself and fulfillment through the acts of love. She meets other women who tell her that she should stand up for herself and fight, but Celie feels that it’s better to survive than to fight and risk not surviving. However, there are certain triggers that lead Celie to stand up. Like a true fighter, Celie proves herself to be willing to stand up for the people she loves. Even as a downtrodden victim of her Pa, Celie sacrifices herself and offers herself to her father so that he keeps his hands off of Nettie. As mentioned in this quote, where Pa is sexually abiding Celie, “First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around. Then he grab hold my titties. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it. ” (Walker, 4). Celie has the potential by putting her efforts into other people, but not realizing she is able to stand up for herself the same ways he does for Nettie. Relating it back to the novel, “Beloved”, Sethe does the same representation when she is trying to save Beloved even though the idea is bizarre of her killing her own child, but she only does it so that she would not have to suffer the way Sethe did. Celie is introduced with Shug Avery a blues singer, who she was first found “rude”, but as the story moves along, Shug Avery becomes the reason Celie learns to love herself. Because Celie is finally opening herself up by loving someone, Celie becomes more lovable. Through Shug’s love, Celie begins to realize her own self-worth, from the minute when Shug Avery wrote a song for Celie, as said in this quote: “This song I'm bout to sing us call Miss. Celie's song.”(Walker, 73).By the end of the novel, Celie loves more

Sometimes life brings experiences of abandonment through difficult times. Celie shows an expression of abandonment from God with her intimate friend Shug Avery, who challenges Celie where she thinks God is. “What God do for me?...He gave me a lynched daddy, crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t see again...The God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgetful and lowdown...Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you. Let’im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place” Celie said in anger (192). It is times like this that society tells the world to push life’s disasters under the rug. When instead it requires the attention of others to become endured. To be human is to go through the struggles of life and face them. Without them, life can become meaningless. Celie experiences this through oppression and her loss of faith in God. Throughout

From pages pp. 1 to 147 a great deal took place. We are introduced to the protagonist/narrator of the novel Celie. The novel starts off with a fourteen-year-old African American named Celie girl who is being molested by her stepfather Alphonso (exposition). In the beginning, the first letter she is raped by her stepfather. Soon after she ended up getting “sick.” It is clear-cut that the “sickness” that she happens to be referring to is pregnancy. Sadly, she never had the opportunity to rear or spend time with her child because the baby was taken away from her. According to her Alphonso took “He took it, he took it while I was sleeping. Kilt it out there in the woods” (Walker 3). Celie is young and very innocent, which made empathic and sympathetic

Being a black female in the south during the early 1900’s, at a time when white and blacks were socially segregated and women were absolutely inferior to men, was one of the many challenges Celie would be faced with in her lifetime. Born in 1895, Celie was raised on a farm in a small town in Georgia where formal education took a back seat to physical labor and household maintenance, and the Church was the main focal point of socialization among local town members.

As a result of these tragic events, Celie writes to an unknown audience, resembling her unknown identity. In the beginning, the only person she can talk to is God. She writes her first letters to God shortly after her so-called father raped her. Each one of the letters is short, choppy and has a similar rhythm. The patterns found in her letters symbolize her state of mind; she feels depressed and weak. "Celie does not think of her letters as anything else than just that, as written documents saying the things she wishes to tell the recipients she cannot speak to in person”, making God the person she has always wished to communicate with (Boynukara). Her letters in the beginning are also mostly written to God and not signed off, illustrating her lack of identity. Her conception of God is a “Big and old and tall and graybearded and white. He wear white robes and go barefooted” (Walker 195). Celie’s first letter proves that she has a low self-confidence when she writes, "Dear God, I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me." (1). According to Janoff Bulman, “cognitive strategy used to make

The most important out of these relationships could be the one she has with her little sister, Nettie. The book consists of a series of letters that Celie writes to her sister and later to God. In these letters she informs Nettie about her life, and

Celie also values her sister Nettie greatly and protects her when it comes to their step-father, Alphonso raping the girls. Celie says “I ast him to take me instead of Nettie while our new mammy was sick.” the casual tone of the preceding line adds to Celie's lack of self-worth; she is so used to being raped by Alphonso that it no longer makes any difference to her. As Celie transitions to the Mister’s household, she is still treated with disrespect by the Mister himself and even one of his sons. In a letter to God, she writes “I spent most of my wedding day running from the oldest boy… He picks up a rock and laid my head open.” Celie grows older in this household and submits to more abuse from her new husband.

Because Celie seeks to protect her younger sister Nettie from being degraded by Pa, Pa frequently targets Celie to be the subject of his physical and sexual abuse. Pa constantly rapes Celie and eventually impregnates her twice. Pa also physically abuses Celie. In one letter, Celie references an incident where Pa punches her because she accidently winks at a boy in her church (12). On top of the physical and sexual abuse that Celie suffers from, Pa also verbally abuses her. He frequently tells Celie that she its ugly and unwanted. Eventually, Celie internalizes these words and begins to think view herself as though she is ugly and unwanted, so she believes that the things that happen to her must be normal. All of the abuse that Celie suffers from at the hands of Pa causes her to characterize all men as violent and

It is through the physical pain that the reader understands the emotional strain and turmoil of the protagonist’s plight. The juxtaposition of survival and living are never more evident here. Her children are kidnapped; killed or sold. She has a body still recovering from the birth of a child, and she is forced to take her mother’s place, as a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault. Walker cleverly crafts this sense of desperation with Celie’s soul baring letters to god, the reader realizes she is has no one else to turn to; her writing only re-enforces her father's control over her. Her persevering spirit is what makes her survival so unique in the sense that she does not become embittered through any of it. “I look at woman, tho, cause I am not scared of them.” Telling god that she has not been traumatized at all by her mother’s passing, in fact, she goes further on “Mabey cause my mamma cuss me you think I kept mad at her. But I ain’t I feel sorry for her. (Walker, 5)” This for the reader is the most heart-breaking stance that she takes, as the reader is aware of the fact that her mother hated Celie’s guts with writing agony because her husband choose to rape her when she could not have sex with him. The reader singularly carries this sense of desperation for the protagonist as she continues to power through the intensity that surrounds her.