Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” What is the central, universal question Alice Walker raises in The Color Purple? (If you had to write an EQ for The Color Purple, what would it be?) How does her portrayal of Celie provide an answer to this question?
Please type a response of 250-300 words.
For me The Color Purple is a book about power. Different characters have different amounts of power at different times, so the universal question for me is how does a character become powerful or powerless? Celie is, of course, the best demonstration of gaining power over time. She starts at first completely helpless. Her weak writing skills and inability to express her feelings signify her shy and powerless nature. Men use her and literally “get on top of her” for sex, thus, symbolizing suppression. Mr.___’s children beat her up and she lets them. Clearly, she is the least powerful character in the book.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as we all know, she gains her confidence step by step. For her, power is all about love and support. Her first strong role model was Sofia-- an Amazonian warrior who doesn’t pay attention to man-woman standards of that time. In the beginning, Celie is clearly jealous of Sofia’s power and even persuades Harpo to beat her up. But, after time, Celie appreciates Sofia as they become close friends. Celie’s transition begins. Next comes Shug. She is just as powerful because she is not scared to talk at men, say works like “fuck” and “shit”, etc. More importantly Shug becomes Celie’s support system. She doesn’t just make love to Celie; Shug is there to talk to her, go on the trips for her and support her every decision. The last strong role model is Nettie. She is that long lost sister that Celie has been praying for. Only after Celie discovers Nettie’s letters, she becomes truly confident. For Celie power is all about support and love around her. Only after her loved ones backed her up, Celie was able to leave Mr. ____, confront her “Pa” and start making pants (which is itself a great symbol for power).
In The Color Purple, Alice Walker talks about several different topics throughout the book. The topics ranged from abuse to personal growth, but the most important one how love managed to be the source of power to make a person change. If Walker raised a universal question in this book, it would revolve around how does love nurture the weak to evolve into a powerful and confident individual? Celie, from the beginning, was a weak hearted girl, who had a difficult upbringing. She faced physical and emotional abuse from her father, along with other separate harmful components. It was evident that Celie let people run over her because for her it was the way “to survive, to be alive”. These two words, “survive” and “alive” meant to have people to do her what they will, both physically and emotionally.For her, to have a life, whether it be in the same hard conditions, meant to endure it because it was normal. Yet, when it came to her sister, Nettie, Celie’s attitude changed. It was not about being able to stay alive with the harm done, but to protect what was loved. She altered from being quiet and close to being submissive to defensive and outspoken. To prevent Nettie from facing the same wrong that was done to her, Celie stood up against her Pa. She did this by both preventing her Pa from touching Nettie to telling him directly to do what he pleased with Celie and her only. This in itself shows the love that Celie had for Nettie. Her love was so strong that it pushed Celie to protect her sister, even at the cost of her discomfort and pain. Celie’s sense of staying quiet diminished entirely and out came a woman who protected what she loved even though it could cause her own demise.
ReplyDeleteActing as an extension of power, I believe that the idea of liberation is very present in The Color Purple. Celie’s character constantly transforms and adapts throughout the book; she slowly gains knowledge of her own situation and gradually refuses to accept it, thus gradually gaining more freedom. As she notices the people in her live have different degrees of autonomy, she begins to question her own and ultimately starts to change it. If The Color Purple were to have an universal question, I believe it would be: “What grants and individual certain liberties? How can they gain or lose freedoms?”
ReplyDeleteMuch like power, Celie’s progression towards freedom is in small steps, but continuous nonetheless. Her journey starts with her father, who sexually abuses her. In the first few entries in her journal, she does not question her situation in her home. She retells the events of the day without interjecting any of her own personal opinions, suggesting that not only does she think her situation is normal, but that she does not have an overwhelming opposition to it. When she is married to Mr._____, the abuse continues and is perpetuated into younger generations. In one journal entry, Celie writes: “Harpo ast his daddy why he beat me. Mr._______ say, Cause he my wife. Plus, she stubborn. All women good for—he don’t finish. He just tuck his chin over the paper like he do. Remind me of Pa.” Nettie, Sofia and Shug offer Celie the motivation and support she needs to break her cycle of oppression and finally experience liberation. Nettie, once living in the control of her father, gains the opportunity to travel and learn about the world. Sofia, who from her introduction into the novel has never tolerated abuse from Harpo, actively fights against the attempts to silence her, and eventually gains freedom via the respect from her once superiors. Shug and Celie share the most intimate relationship, and the most significant in terms of progress. Witnessing how Shug exists between the realms of conventional male and female roles, Celie learns to seek her liberation on her own. She eventually escapes the oppressive grasp of Mr._______ , proving that freedom can be gained.
One universal concept about the book happens to be about God. Celie undergoes a long-term transformation from a pitiable, repressed and abused teenager to a strong, caring and independent woman, and Walker’s representation of her as a person relates to this larger idea of reaching out to God. Celie is taught through her friends and family how to live to get the most out of the little she has, and which things to value above everything else. By writing to God, she expresses her sorrows even though she is trapped in a society which will always discriminate against her, she fights to have her voice heard. Understandably, Celie has grown disillusioned with this idea of God and the fact that she has been writing to him all these years assuming he was another white man she would spend her life trying to understand and yet another white man whose only goal was to judge her until the day she died. God had failed her, and in this case, she stopped writing to him.
ReplyDeleteThe Color Purple's humanism and its religious message about god not being some enigmatic entity, but rather a real human feeling, which encourages self-affirmation and an appreciation for yourself as a person, hand in hand with an appreciation with nature and your condition, is so beautiful. Especially when paired with the loving female and sisterly relationships and when facing the harsh realities of being black in the south in the early 20th century.
As Albert quotes: "Men are supposed to wear the pants", during the time, in both America and Africa, women had little to no power nor freedom. I believe the purist of these two things in conjunction is the unspoken fight for feminism.The overarching question in 'The Color Purple' is: "What empowers women to fight back for themselves?"
ReplyDeleteWe as a society define power as "independence", "freedom", and "stability", 'The Color Purple' tells the tale of how Celie acquired these over the course of the book. The different variety of characters exposed to Celie build up her character until she becomes a more powerful individual than how she started out in the beginning. Sofia for example, refuses to submit to her 'owners' and physically fights back until they become exhausted, this is her 'talent', what with all of the women in the book having their own unique skill that helps them support one another, additionally, it is also what Celie takes after the women she meets. Agnes' talent is discovered that she has a good blues singing voice, and creates a job for herself as a singer and makes a living from it. Since she is reabsorbed into the clique of women, this is an example of their solidarity and and ability to forgive and co-exist in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. The only thing that antagonizes and prevents the women from being able to complete their hopes and dreams are the men in the book, whose backward beliefs and terrible treatment of the women, they act as the polar opposites of the women, and can only interact with each other with a crude tone.
This too, is part of the women strength, who utilize their disorganizes opponents in order to create their own group to unite themselves.
On a final note, to respond to that Barthes quote, I would argue that while the answer of a book's question isn't in literature, but the pursuit of the answer can be found within the text.