Color Purple By Alice Walker Essay, Research Paper

The novel, The Color Purple, is an epistolary novel. In the letterforms, Alice

Walker gives several ideas, such as, friendship, domination, courage &

independence. She impacts readers by looking at the story through the eyes of

Celie and Nettie. The book describes the fateful life of a young lady. It tells

how a 14 year old girl fights through all the steps and finally she is in

command for her own life. Celie is the young lady who has been constantly

physically, sexually, and emotionally abused. Eventually she turns into a

lesbian. In the book, The Color Purple, "dear God, Nettie, dear stars and

trees" are the only people she communicates with. All the letters show that

Celie is a very insecure person, and that reflects to her teenage years. All the

abusing caused her a scar in her heart, which would stay there and wouldn’t go

away. Every time she thought about the abusement she felt like she was

experiencing it all over again. In The Color Purple, there are many conflicts,

which arise from the theme. First of all, Celie is against Pa and Mr._____, that

shows the conflict of man Vs man, and unfortunately, Celie doesn’t have the

power to fight back physically. Secondly, Celie and herself that show the

conflict of man Vs him/herself. She can’t win over herself and that is why she

doesn’t have enough courage to stand up and be in command for her own life.

Thirdly, the tradition of men had high social status then women. That shows the

conflict of man Vs society. At the end of the book Celie eventually fight over

the tradition. Men are no longer in charge for her life. In the book, The Color

Purple, Alice Walker used several symbols and personifications to describe

Celie’s insecure and painful life. From the view of a reader, the title of the

book, "The Color Purple" represents the pain and the bruises that had

been given to Celie through her pitiful life. Dear God, Nettie, dears stars and

trees show Celie’s insecure personality, also Alice Walker personalized the

stars and trees to be involved with Celie’s communication. By reading through

the book, readers would understand the discriminations of men and women’s social

statuses at that time when the story was taking place, and Celie is just one of

those young ladies who has a fateful life. A young lady in those days, the

hopeless and loneliness Celie had, is much worse then we can feel or imagine

today. Males are portrayed in many different ways in the novel, The Color

Purple. All though men are portrayed, there is some good imagery of men too. The

four main male characters in the novel are Alfonso, Mr.______, Samual, Adam, and

Jack are the good examples. They eventually change the ways of treating women.

In the book, The Color Purple, the unfortunates that Celie had might be still

happening in somewhere around the world in these days. Hopefully, those people

who are in the unfortunate situation would have a chance to read The Color

Purple of Alice Walker’s and learn the axiom to rebel to the oppressions and

discriminations.