Colour purple
The novel mainly deals with the lives of African-American people of southern United States and particularly the women during the sass. It starts off with a letter written by Celli our main character who is fourteen years Old. She is writing a letter to God talking about her family, her problems mainly the sexual abuse she is facing from her father due to which she was impregnated twice. She writes these letters because she has no one with whom she can talk about these incidents and also because her father has sternly told her not to talk about it to anyone but God.
From these letters we get to know Celli, she is from a poor family consisting of a bedridden other, a sister Nettle whom she is close to and many other siblings. We get to know that Celli is a very timid girl who has been hustled around all her life and that that she has never spoken up for herself. As the story progresses she married off to Mr. . She goes to his house but her conditions and problems remain the same just the people causing the problems change. Her sister Nettle comes to live with her for some time but Mr. says that Nettle cannot stay and must leave and hence the sisters’ part.
One day Chug Avery walks into Cell?s life and changes start occurring. Chug Avery is a famous singer who was in relationship with Mr. during their teen years of life with her help Celli starts to learn to open herself slowly. Major changes occur with Celli when she finds out that Mr. has been hiding her sestets letters from her, knowing this she decides to move with Chug to Tennessee. There she starts discovering herself and paint her canvas of ideas with new vibrant colors. She learns about her kids through letters from Nettle. She opens a clothing business and becomes financially independent.
The novel ends with he sisters reuniting and the development of all characters for the better. Many themes and ideas are addressed in the novel. One major idea propagated by this novel is that people need to speak up and fight. Celli is a quiet girl who endures all the things done to her, people like Nettle, Kate and others constantly say to her to fight but she just endures giving reasons that she wants to live and speaking might kill her but what is the point of living when one does not have the right to express himself it’s as if the person is a puppet moving due to the threads controlled by the puppeteer.
We finally she that when she speaks up for herself she does not killed but on the contrary takes a step towards living in it’s true sense. Other important topic this novel touches is discrimination. Discrimination happening in the novel is of many forms one racial where Miss Millie a white woman cannot bear to see Sofia an African-American woman with a car, watch and clean well-dressed children so she has to ask Sofia to become her maid and make herself feel superior. Another form of discrimination is what Celli faces where people label her ugly.
The whole idea of discrimination arises when one feels a errors lower in status or wealth or knowledge is getting on par with them so to give oneself a feeling of superiority people find the weakness in other people exploit it. Nonetheless if person believes in his skills and is happy with what he has there is no need for discrimination. Another major type of discrimination happening is due to the gender. The author has clearly highlighted the difficulties faced by woman the constant abuse, the household work problems, the financial dependency, etc.
She has also given us Collie’s example of how to overcome this. The author also talks about the buses faced by young boys from men. Mr. father abuses him and Mr. abuses Harp this abuse takes the form of authority where decisions are made by abuser for the abused restricting the freedom Of the abused. We can see that this is a chain and it needs to be broken somewhere for the cycle of being abused and abusing to stop. Motifs such as letters, colors, God are used in the novel.
Letters is what the novel is composed of letters of Celli and that of Nettle. Celli writes letters to God in the start of the novel because she has no one else to write and latter to Nettle. Nettle writes her letters to Celli for the same reason. We can say that Celli and Nettle are able to express their true self in these letters and it is a form of relief for them to be able to write and express themselves without being judged. Colors are used in the novel to depict transition.
Celli goes shopping with Kate for the first time and has only the option of dull colors but later on we can see Celli change, become bold and wear bright colors to signify her change. The idea of God is a very significant one in the novel. We know that Celli writes her letters to God, she thinks of God as an old white man with a white beard, blue eyes and white dress. When Chug comes to know of this she asks Celli to think of God as something without gender not in the form of human or a picture but as something which is present as a part of everything.
This idea of God is the creation of Alice Walker. I think it is a product of her experiences in life and this idea seems to be popular among people of the current generation. I would say that I agree with this idea partially to the point where God is without gender but to think that God exists in everything is just weird. Say for example god exists in rocks, water, and nature so does he even exist in man made things like spectacles or pencils or chairs or any other thing for that matter does not make much sense.
Leaving that aside we see that Celli starts addressing her letters to everything latter on not just God but Stars, trees and other clearing showing that she has opened up and is much more strong women who can speak for herself. The novel was quite interesting to read and was very educating. It clearly brings up the issues of discrimination and abuse and teaches us how and why to voice ourselves against these, helps us kook at things differently for example the idea of God.
I think the author is a bit harsh on men, there are few instances men in general are said to possess a few faulty traits in their behavior towards women but again not everyone is the same and generalizing anything other than scientific formulae may need good amount of re-evaluation before it is done. Apart from that it’s a very good book for anyone to read and learn from it has lessons for both men and women. 1 . Do you think the last relationship Chug has with Germane important to the evolve or would the novel have managed well even without it?
