The Color Purple Critical Analysis

Words: 2080
Pages: 9

Alice Walker, a National book awardee was born in the year 1944 in the rural lands of Georgia. She was a very studious child from the beginning to a tenant farmer and a housemaid mother and so after completing her graduation ,she won scholarship to Spelman college .She later majored in literature and did further research on Latin history and poetry.
Just then three years after graduating, she got her collection of poems published and married a human rights lawyer.
Her first novel, The First Life Of Grande Copeland got published in the year 1970 followed by her second novel named Meridian was published in 1976 respectively talking about the struggle of women for certain civil rights in the southern America at that time. She received Pulitzer
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Walker’s The Color Purple tells us about the life of a girl named Celie,her challenges and hardships she faced during her teenage as well as her entire life and gives an account of other various problems prevalent during that time in southern America especially for blacks.
The novel also interprets the love that women hold for each other which evolves according to time .
Celie, an inferior, helpless and uneducated fourteen year old teenager initially addresses her letters to the god and then thereafter to Nettie (her younger sister) in the book. The first few letters interpret her struggles as a teenager, she recalls how her father raped her multiple times as she got impregnated twice. She then claims that her father snatched the first baby from her and so initially she suspects that he could have killed him in the woods but later when she grows up into a woman discovers that both her children were alive and were being raised by a couple with whom Nettie used to work with in Africa. Nettie, Celie’s younger sister was pretty and so she ran away when she was a teenager as soon as she got to know that her father is marrying her off to a strange man who was much older than her. On the other hand, Celie was caught in a loveless marriage as she was being sold to this man called Albert by her father. Later she got
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In general the colour is a symbol of creativity, wealth, wisdom, dignity and peace. As the colour is the combination of red and blue, therefore it adds up all the qualities of the colour red and blue respectively. Also, this colour represents all the good things god created for us,the humans. Therefore relating the colour purple with the novel now, Celie wasn’t someone who knew about the existence of this colour until someone like Shug came in her life and made her realize about a lot of things. Before the existence of Shug,Celie’s life was plain and dull. Shug is the person who educates everything about the colour purple to Celie by telling her various facts and her own understandings. She therefore guides Celie to notice the gifts the god and use them in your present life. She tells her that god is very generous and thus has provided enough gifts for all of us to enjoy and live with. In other words she wanted to say that god wants Celie to enjoy her life to her fullest rather than ruining her life by being plain, shedding tears or being assaulted . This was probably the very reason she left Albert and moved to Memphis with Shug after which she started leading a peaceful