Give a history of the African country before, during, and after European colonization. Her confidence increases once she discovers that Nettie, believed to be dead, is still alive. This usually inarticulate woman (verbally, that is) is able to command words that undercut Albert in ways comparable to that of Janie with Jody Starks in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. He brings some chocolate, and they socialize while Celie teaches Shug to quilt. She can sing. It too short to be long, too long to be short. The main reason that African Americans were drawn to the Baptists and Methodist churches was that these two denominations had opposed slavery early in American history. Shug got looks, he say. Kind and good, Samuel adopts two children, Olivia and Adam, who are given to him by Pa (and who turn out to be Celie 's children). She turns pant-making into a full time occupation and rather quickly becomes a competent, highly patronized seamstress. When Celie goes back home to see Sofia and Harpo, she finds Mr. has changed. In the first period of her life, Celie experiences the misery of poverty and cruelty at the hands of her stepfather. God How old is Celie at the beginning of the story? 117. The letter from Nettie says that she, Nettie, is safe and happy, and so are Olivia and Adam. Schools and churches were segregated, as well as housing. Most of Eatonton's residents were tenant farmers. She moves from seeing God as the center of her universe to redefining the concept of the supernatural as an "It" that dwells in everyone. Are there any advantages or disadvantages to using this literary form when the major character is a woman? The essential, interesting ideas of Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison about African American literature, its roots, purposes and future. The episode of Sofia and the mayor's wife describes one of the fronts of this battle. Until Mr. starts looking around and belonging to the world and caring for it, he is condemned to be Mr. and not Albert. Nettie's letters about missionaries in Africa describe another. Having grown self-conscious as a result of her injury, Alice withdrew to writing poetry. This conversation is a new beginning for Celie. Narrow your scope by focusing on one European country and one African country that was colonized by it. Because of the book's popularity, Harris maintains that black women critics are particularly reluctant to find fault with the book, even when they find elements in it disturbing. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. On another occasion when company comes, Celie says she stands "in front the glass trying to make something out my hair. Her passivity rivals that of many slave women. They tilled the soil, but the land was owned by their former slave masters. She finds the letters from Nettie to Celie that Albert has for years kept hidden away from Celie. After treating Celie so harshly, and being forced to admire the quiet resignation Celie has in responding to such treatment, Shug's bad treatment turns to good. Celie may evolve within the scheme Walker has set up for her black women characters, but she does so at the price of reliving many portions of the lives of women in Walker's earlier fiction. Writers are the antennae of any society. In frustration, many black males turned their anger towards women. I do a right smart for the preacher. Critical Overview Through the character of Celie, the author is able to present her message of sexual liberation and self-determination for women. Shug maintains that Celie is going to Memphis with her: You satisfied that what you want, Shug say, cool as clabber. The letters are written in a chronological order, but there are skipped years, more or less how old are Nettie and Celie when the novel ends? Celie discovers that she is important to someone. I can't explain the feeling I got when the car stopped down the drive. Walker emphasized in her comments on the future progression of black women characters that they would learn to make room for themselves, that they would carve out "a new place to move." It is clearly not a man that Celie wants, a factor that further strengthens her decision to leave. The letters say Nettie and Samuel got married in the middle of the Olinka war. In TheColor Purple, Celie's letters are in the language of a black girl who has left school very early in life while Nettie's are in perfect, standard English. To be a victim is to be the quintessential caring mother, self-effacing under all circumstances where the welfare of children is concerned., The world of Walker's early fiction is one in which black people make victims of other black people because of white people. The mayor of the town with whom Sofia has a run-in. The reunion lasts only fifteen minutesthen the mayor's wife insists that Sofia drive her home. Albert had a difficult life and took out his frustrations on Celie. Shug invites Celie to the performance. Whites crush this serpent when they can because they are still enraged. But Nettie's letters keep arriving. Surprisingly, Celie's home-bound sojourn in Memphis as companion and lover to Shug seems unliberating, but, taken in its context, it gives Celie a new lease on life. Celie has also learned to speak up for herself, claiming her house when her stepfather dies. Then us both laugh so hard us flop down on the step.". In The Color Purple, the story is told through letters. Basically there are four time frames of the novel. The primary theme of The Color Purple, though, reflects Walker's desire to project a positive As admirers of The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian already know, to read an Alice Walker novel is to enter the country of surprise. At the beginning of the novel, when Sofia told her she should be furious, Celie could not feel rage. She shows in transformed But Nettie and my children coming home soon, I say. She puts on, then takes off, a new dress because it "won't help none with my notty head and dusty headrag, my old everyday shoes and the way I smell." The issue of incest, therefore, is really not as convincingly relevant to the formation of Celie's personality or to the understanding of her situation as it might initially seem. Insistence on Cultural Specificity You sure is ugly, she say, like she ain't believed it." document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. When she refuses to have sex with her husband, Albert, he rapes Celie. Contemplating a new life, and moving geographically to achieve it, adds a new dimension to the consideration of Celie as stifled character. Within white society, men were expected to control the family and had status over women. Pa molests Celie repeatedly for years. Sofia must eventually suppress most of the traits that make her an interesting character, turning from vibrancy to somnambulism, and Celie's formula for survival is mirrored back to her with a vengeance. In his review, Wesley sees the character of Mr. emblematic of "male privilege. . She holds no malice toward Shug for being a luscious slut (one with whom Celie will also fall in love), and she seems to have little sense of the usual decorum involved in human relationships. Celie turns them into a means of expression. Then, Shug travels around singing, and Celie starts Folkspants, Unlimited, a family clothing business. Sources early in her career. Mr. ____ start up from his seat, look at Shug, plop back down again. Good schools, lots of fresh air and exercise. This quote shows that Nettie really cares about Celie and there are more chunks from the novel that show that she never stops caring for her. Celie's situation with Albert is so bad that Nettie describes it as a burial. Richard Abcarian, Negro American Literature, Wadworth, California, 1970. White southern businessmen felt economically threatened when a black business took black customers from them. In Nettie's letters, there is much less intimacy. When the life here gets too difficult and one lacks the strength to change it, one turns to Jesus and heaven. She gives life. There she met Melvyn Leventhal, a white civil rights attorney, whom she married in 1967. Olivia returns to America with the Reverend, Nettie, Adam, and his wife, Tashi, and is reunited with Celie, her birth mother. By making the connection to Africa, Walker emphasizes the importance of African Americans' roots. The only sentences outside the letters are the first two: "You better not never tell nobody but God. In Thunder, Stein and Day, New York, 1972. The Leventhals were the first legally married interracial couple to live in Jackson, Mississippi. She accepts those spaces in which she can operate without offending and without calling undue attention to herself. In his relationship with Sofia, Harpo tries to live up to his father's role as the domineering male. Celie has grown up in the church and has attended during both of her pregnancies, so she continues that tradition during the years she is with Albert. Celie Timeline and Summary. "Walker is airing dirty linen in public. Many married women with children are in the workplace. When they leave for Africa on missionary work, Nettie goes with them. For each example, include the title, author, date of publication, and a summary of the novel. On one of her visits she tells Albert to buy Celie some clothes. It "does not mean that she is anti-male," he says, "but that she has less time and energy to devote to exploring more fully the problems of men or the common causes of the oppression of both.", Also writing in Ms., Gloria Steinem finds much to praise and little to criticize in Walker's novel. Themes After slavery, the social and economic relations for African Americans remained much the same. The story covers thirty years of Celie's life from childhood to her maturity as an independent woman. They are full of information that becomes a source of knowledge for Celie outside the world of her own small community. When Celie's father-in-law, Old Mr.____, criticizes Shug, Celie, who has been sent to get the man a glass of water, overhears him: I drop little spit in Old Mr.____ water. I twirl the spit round with my finger. Next time he come I put a little Shug Avery pee in his glass. Now that she can communicate, Celie gets what she needed: company, community, a "we." Now Celie believes that God allowed her to suffer and paid no attention to her prayers. Nettie and my children finally come home. Along with Sofia and Nettie, Shug is a role model who helps Celie change her life. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me" (Walker 1). Shug also helps Celie get started in her business by encouraging her to sew. His strong support of the novel concludes his review. Harpo marries Sofia and they have five children. This rage is healthy for her. They end up in Africa with Celie's sister Nettie, who works for the missionary family that adopted them. I am I have always been a good girl. She is reminding women of their failures as well. A lot of people do not want to hear that." When Nettie looked at the roof of her new house in the village, she knew she was in front of the Olinkas' God. When Sofia returns she is quite nasty to her, but she also helps Sofia out when she is jailed for standing up for herself from being insulted by whites. Adam's African wife Tashi also comes to America with them. As an educated . Walker presents a clear picture in the book of the economic and social hardships that African Americans faced in the rural south during the early 1900s. First, they went to New York, where Nettie discovered Harlem and African culture. Along with novels, Walker has written many collected short stories and books of poetry. Dear Everything, Dear God." Not the little wildflowers. These ideas stopped him from marrying Shug, the woman he loved. I jump up and do just what they say." Now they can talk. During the period of the novel, segregation between blacks and whites was enforced legally to the point that blacks had to sit in separate parts of movie houses and drink out of separate fountains, and were forbidden from eating at white lunch counters. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. She cleans it of its horror with a ceremony and sells her pants there. She does not object to her stepfather's evaluation of her because she believes she is ugly. Hodges is the brother of Squeak's white father. Mr. ____ tells Celie, as a result of Nettie's refusal, that Nettie must leave their house. In The Color Purple, this fight is presented through a myth, the African version of the biblical Adam and Eve story. In The Color Purple, Nettie comes to live with Celie and Celie's new family because Alphonso, their stepfather, seems determined to rape Nettie as he has raped Celie.Nettie runs away from home . And she shares with many of the other Walker women the subservience to men. Celie's younger sister. At this stage, the place in the home is all that Celie can envision for women like herself and Sofia. 1930s: The relationship between men and women is clearly defined. A distinction in terminology is made for black women because their struggle for expression has been different from white women. Adam is Celie's son who was adopted by the missionary, Reverend Samuel, and his wife, Corrine. Readers are constantly tom between their desire to believe and the experience and history that suggest that even a single individual like Celie (even if her representative qualities are ignored) would have more difficulty and more serious wrestling with the spirit to effect the kinds of changes Walker presents, just as they have difficulty accepting the extremity of the abuses in her life. Celie goes through the somnambulism of her days without consideration of it in any special way; her emotional state is such that few things draw her far out of her passive existence. Celie is allowed to bask in the discovery of the good feelings emotionally and the pleasure of the body she experiences with Shug, for this woman is able to bring out things in her that neither her stepfather nor Albert could. Through Shug, Celie discovers that Mr. ____ has been intercepting Nettie's letters for several years. What you gon do? Her mean and condescending With the epistolary form, Walker was able to focus on the inner life of her main character and create a sense of intimacy that may be partly responsible for the success of the book. It is through the help of Shug Avery that Celie finds her hopethe letters from Nettie that Albert had hidden from her. This fight has to start with oneself: "Well, we all have to start somewhere if us want to do better and our own self is what us have to hand.". One day, Shug Avery comes to town, but Mr. does not take Celie to see her. With not having a husband in the picture, Nettie isquite happy with her life. That's how come I know trees fear man.". Another period, not directly a part of Celie's life, is Nettie's time spent in Africa. She is reminding many of us men of our own failures. Sound like a death But as a black woman who's been abused by men all her life, Celie eventually begins to rebel against this image of God. When Sofia returns home after leaving Harpo for a substantial absence, she brings a prizefighter with her. From this, she also becomes very independent without a man around. It also won her considerable praise and much criticism for its controversial themes. When they got back to Africa, the Olinkas were so desperate that they had marked their children's faces to keep their tradition alive. Her father has raped her, and she has two children, a girl and a boy, whom "Pa" took away from her. Nothing special here for nobody to love. Themes The legacy of what feminists call patriarchal education (the American Dream) is loneliness. There are only four openings: "Dear God," "Dear Nettie," "Dear Celie," and the long opening of the last letter, which is a variation of "Dear God." The Reverend, his wife, and Nettie, who has been taken in by them, leave with the children for Africa to do some missionary work there. I ast myself. Retaliation by lynching went unchallenged until the United States Congress tried to pass an anti-lynching law in 1937. 1930s: Violence against women is widespread and ignored by the police. It is to be admitted to the world of rural black women, a world long neglected by most whites, perhaps out of ignorance, perhaps out of willed indifference. Celie's self-effacing stance is given ironic re-inforcement in the novel in the character of her daughter-in-law, Sofia, a black woman who does fight back. The village began worshipping the leaves. Research the history of the epistolary novel and give three other examples of this form in literature. For example, Celie's letters are much shorter than Nettie's. Which do you enjoy reading more? He warns her that if she tells, it will kill her mother. Odessa takes care of Sofia's children when Sofia is sent to jail. 1, Spring, 1986, pp. When Mr.'s father comes to the house and attacks Shug, Mr. and Celie feel united for the first time, and that scene will be developed at the end of the novel when they start talking to each other. Celie advises Harpo to beat her. Most of the letters that comprise the book are letters Celie writes to God or, after learning that her sister Nettie is in Africa, to Nettie. Both books dealt with the civil rights movement. Celie, though interesting, provocative, and un-like many other black women characters in black literature and in Walker's fiction, is nonetheless so like many of them that that kinship overshadows other statements Walker may wish to make in The Color Purple. In time, white people will be the new serpent and colored people will crush them. See how he like that. Fight," she says. My body just any woman's body going through the changes of age. While they work together, she tells him the Olinkas' version of Adam and Eve's story: Adam and Eve were the first white babies in a black world, rejected because they were different. Celie accepts her place and submits to the beatings that go along with it; she even tells Albert's son, Harpo, that he should beat his wife Sofia. Native, Asian, Latin and Black Americans have felt the pressure of stereotype in their lives and have talked about it in art. Celie does not know about Nettie's attempts to communicate with her until Shug finds the letters from Nettie that Albert has hidden. To Celie, God is a distant figure, who she doubts cares about her concerns. The serpent represents black people. A, Herzog That is why Olinkas worship serpents in Africa. You took my sister Nettie away from me, I say. This type of communication is not linguistic. Within the context of a consideration of growth and liberation, Celie's pants making is an appropriate and effective symbol. Shug is ill and Mr. brings her to his home. She is arrested, beaten and left in prison. Hire yourself out to farm? The rejected whites were furious and started destroying black peoples. To her, God was just another man, up in the sky, a white man who was patiently listening to her. The final scene, that of the meeting of the two sisters, represents the recovery of Celie's and Nettie's "we," their home. In this area of her life so very vital to self-conception, Celie reflects no evolved state of mind, no substantial change from the majority of her dark-skinned black sisters of the 1930s and 1940s and perhaps a few of those who still devalued themselves early in the 1980s, when Walker published the novel. The pithy, direct black folk idiom of The Color Purple is in the end its greatest strength, reminding us that if Walker is sometimes an ideologue, she is also a poet. She gets answers, not only from people, but from God also (unlike the first one, this God speaks). Alice Walker Study Guide Flashcards PLUS Letters 61-69 Summary It must have been a pathetic exchange. This attitude filtered into black culture, but the black male, unlike his white counterpart, was humiliated daily for the color of his skin. One of the three major female characters in the story who have a positive influence on Celie. When the missionary group arrived in Africa, the Olinkas thought Adam and Olivia were Nettie's and Samuel's children. Since men have been her most cruel oppressors, it is ironically appropriate that she take something traditionally assigned to them in shaking off the power they have over her. I shrug my shoulders. Brownfield bows and scrapes to the white men for whom he works, but he beats his wife unmercifully. Celie and Albert also reverse roles. When she returns with a boyfriend, Harpo is jealous. (The novel is a series of letters, first from Celie to God, and then back and forth between Celie and Nettie. She has absorbed it and made it her own. She moves from being ugly duckling to a figuratively beautiful swan. She dedicates her new song to her, shows her she is important. She tells Celie that Celie is a much better house-keeper than Albert's first wife. That this thing, this object that could be shunted around by almost everyone, finds the strength to extricate herself from her circumstances is truly remarkable. He needs Celie to become Albert again. ." A reverend, married to Corrine. She moves from being a strait-laced church woman to being a reefer smoker. Reviewers praised her for her use of the epistolary form, in which written correspondence between characters comprises the content of the book, and her ability to use black folk English. Many epistolary novels are written from the main female character's point of view. Her characters in future works, she said, would no longer go crazy, as Myrna does in "Really, Doesn't Crime Pay?" He didn't want the two to have intimate contact, even through letters. For Further Study Nettie and Celie's teacher, who recognizes the girls' intense desire to learn. Even in a calmer mood later in the novel, when he and Celie are somewhat reconciled, he offers essentially the same evaluation of her looks. Then he talk to the other ladies and they mens. In the following review, Smith praises Walker for the pungency and tenderness of The Color Purple as well as for its strong characterizations. Celie is forbearing and a hard worker, for which every one praises her. She does not object to the violation of her home (at times, it seems as if she is pleased that Shug can take care of Albert in ways she cannot). The musician who performs at the jukejoint Harpo has built. 18, no. Though Nettie swore it was not so, Corrine was not convinced. She is like the one-eyed mule who is traded off to the buyer who believes that he has at least purchased sound flesh. 1930s: Most religious African Americans belong to either a Baptist or Methodist congregation. When the Reverend's wife dies, Nettie marries him. Shug sings "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and then her new piece, called "Celie's Song." Caring:But God, I miss you, Celie. And she was the only person love me in the world. As a spin-off for involvement with the church, literacy and education flourished. Summary Letters 44-60 Summary Us sleep like sisters, me and Shug. By the end of the story, Celie is an independent businesswoman, and Albert is her assistant. What Shug verbalizes is what Celie has felt about her general appearance a few minutes before when she saw the wagon approaching. Nettie is highly intellectual and from an early age recognizes the value of education. She tries to communicate certain things, and she succeeds, though she does not realize. There is a deep discussion of Richard Wright's novel. Letters 60 -67 (Pages 152 - 182) 1. Celie gives Nettie the name of the Reverend and his wife the only people, Celie says, she has ever seen with money. The Color Purple was published in 1982 and brought Walker overnight success and recognition as an important American writer. You shape funny. In a fit of magnanimity, the mayor's wife offers to drive Sofia home to see her children, whom she hasn't laid eyes on in five years. Ridiculous in its conception, the situation becomes more so when Shug asks and is granted permission from Celie to continue sleeping with Albert. Southern senators killed the bill by not letting it come to a vote in the Senate. ), Celie is married off to Mr.____, a downtrodden farmer who beats her. When Celie became self-sufficient, she could easily have turned her back on Albert, but it is not within the frame-work of her character to be uncharitable. Shug and Grady return in a sporty car. Pa marries Celie off to Mr.__, a man looking for a woman to clean his house, cook for him, and take care of his children.
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