When an author writes a novel, a narrative method must be chosen which will effectively and uniquely convey the plot and characters to the readers. Epistolary novels are written as a collection of documents which are usually in the form of letters. This method of using letters to present the plot adds realism to stories by mimicking real-life letters and allowing the voice of a specific narrator to be experienced more intimately. This method of storytelling is most exceptionally presented in The Colour Purple, by Alice Walker, as the novel is made up of letters written by Celie, the protagonist and her experiences in an era when women had little power. In fact, her ability to write these letters allows the reader to recognize both her attempts at gaining power and her desperate struggle against her male-dominated society. This novel focuses on the oppression of African-American women, specifically by males, during the twentieth-Century in America (Christian 2). Walker writes this novel in an epistolary form so that it allows her protagonist to establish her own life as an individual while also telling the story that Walker so intricately wants to weave. Walker’s excellent use of these letters reveals Celie’s struggles to gain self-esteem, independence and to remove herself from the isolation she so desperately experiences. Walker’s intricate use of the letters allows the reader to connect to Celie on a far more personal and intense level than a regular form of narration would permit.
Throughout the novel, Celie’s letters reveal her insecurity and fear in real life, but also display that, unlike in face-to face situations, she is not afraid to show her confidence and attitude on paper. At the beginning of the novel, Celie starts...
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... and allowing her to express her emotions, both positive and negative, in real life situations.
Work Cited
Christian, Barbara T. "Alice (Malsenior) Walker." Afro-American Fiction Writers After 1955. Ed. Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris-Lopez. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 33. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 7 Aug. 2011.
Wall, Wendy. "Lettered Bodies and Corporeal Texts in The Color Purple." Studies in American Fiction 16.1 (Spring 1988): 83-97. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 167. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 1 Aug. 2011.
Warhol, Robyn R. "How Narration Produces Gender: Femininity as Affect and Effect in Alice Walker's The Color Purple." Narrative 9.2 (2001): 182. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 2 Aug. 2011.
Schultz, Elizabeth. "African and Afro-American Roots in Contemporary Afro-American Literature: The Difficult Search for Family Origins." Studies in American Fiction 8.2 (1980): 126-145.
Gates, Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. Print.
Lister, Rachel . "Gender and Sexuality in The Color Purple ." Alice Walker: The Color Purple. : Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. . Print.
Sofia’s encounter with Millie is a daily occurrence in nations worldwide. Her “Hell no” is a justified response to the subservience white people have forced upon African Americans and the constant struggle against black women have against abuse and sexism. Millie is an example of the everyday white woman whose class and social standing prompt her unawareness about social problems and her own racist misgivings. Alice Walker’s novel explores this deep-rooted racism intertwined with social class and sexism. Walker’s writes from the events that have marked her life, other’s lives, and the cruelty that has scarred the black community for years. Hence, the softened racism in the form of stereotypical comments, white superiority complexes, and the sexism towards women of color that fills the
Alice Walker’s writing is encouraging, for it empowers individuals to embrace their culture, human decency, and the untold stories of those who were forgotten. She slays gender roles while fighting for the rights of everyone, and frequently describes how one can impact the life of another and how much control one should have over another’s fate in her themes. Walker’s sublime style exhibited within her works goes lengths to display her themes which are based mainly off of the passionate women she was raised around and the circumstances they overcame. She uses symbolism and metaphors to highlight the themes within her works. Transition needed. carefully cultivates texts that demonstrate her ability to appeal to the minds of the common populace.
Most of Walker's fiction work is suffuse by her Southern background. Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia which is considered to be a rural town where most black workers work as lessee farmer. She was the eighth and the last child of Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker and Willie Lee Walker. Her parents were poor sharecroppers. In the summer of 1952 at the age of eight, she fell into a depression when her older brother accidentally shot her with a BB gun, causing her to lost one sight of her eye. (LLC n.pag) She later started to hidden herself from the other kids in her neighborhood. She explained, "I no longer felt like the little girl I was. I felt old, and because I felt I was unpleasant to look at, filled with shame. I retreated into solitude, and read stories and began to write poems." (Alice Walker) However later in her high school senior year in 1961, Walker got a rehabilitation scholarship to Spelman, a college for black women in Atlanta. In here, she became involved in the civil rights movement and associated in sit-ins at local business establishments. In her junior year, she transferred to another college in Bronxville, New York called Sarah Lawrence College and graduate there in 1965. In 1967, Walker married a Jewish Civil rights attorney, Melvyn Leventhal where she was an activist and teacher in Mississippi.
3. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Trudier Harris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Gale Group, 1987. pp. 133-145.
Critical Essays on Alice Walker. Ed. By Ikenna Dieke. Greenwood Press, Westpoint, Connecticut, London, 1999
Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are similar to having the same concept about black women to have a voice. Both are political, controversial, and talented experiencing negative and positive reviews in their own communities. These two influential African-American female authors describe the southern hospitality roots. Hurston was an influential writer in the Harlem Renaissance, who died from mysterious death in the sixties. Walker who is an activist and author in the early seventies confronts sexually progression in the south through the Great Depression period (Howard 200). Their theories point out feminism of encountering survival through fiction stories. As a result, Walker embraced the values of Hurston’s work that allowed a larger
Alice Walker’s writings were greatly influenced by the political and societal happenings around her during the 1960s and 1970s. She not only wrote about events that were taking place, she participated in them as well. Her devoted time and energy into society is very evident in her works. The Color Purple, one of Walker’s most prized novels, sends out a social message that concerns women’s struggle for freedom in a society where they are viewed as inferior to men. The events that happened during and previous to her writing of The Color Purple had a tremendous impact on the standpoint of the novel.
Alice Walker, "The Color Purple." ENGL 3060 Modern and Contemporary Literature, a book of 2003. Web. The Web. The Web.
In today’s advanced societies, many laws require men and women to be treated equally. However, in many aspects of life they are still in a subordinated position. Women often do not have equal wages as the men in the same areas; they are still referred to as the “more vulnerable” sex and are highly influenced by men. Choosing my Extended Essay topic I wanted to investigate novels that depict stories in which we can see how exposed women are to the will of men surrounding them. I believe that as being woman I can learn from the way these characters overcome their limitations and become independent, fully liberated from their barriers. When I first saw the movie “Precious” (based on Sapphire’s “Push”) I was shocked at how unprotected the heroine, Precious, is towards society. She is an African-American teenage girl who struggles with accepting herself and her past, but the cruel “unwritten laws” of her time constantly prevent her rise until she becomes the part of a community that will empower her to triumph over her barriers. “The Color Purple” is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Alice Walker which tells the story of a black woman’s, Celie’s, striving for emancipation. (Whitted, 2004) These novels share a similar focus, the self-actualization of a multi-disadvantaged character who with the help of her surrounding will be able to triumph over her original status. In both “The Color Purple” and “Push”, the main characters are exposed to the desire of the men surrounding them, and are doubly vulnerable in society because not only are they women but they also belong to the African-American race, which embodies another barrier for them to emancipate in a world where the white race is still superior to, and more desired as theirs.
Black Fiction: New Studies in the Afro-American Novel since 1945. Ed. A. Robert Lee, a.s.c. London: Vision Press, 1980. 54-73.
Sedgewick observes, one’s social position is affected by various axis of classification such as gender, sexuality, race, class and the interplay of these social identities. In The Color Purple by Alice walker, Sedgewick’s observations ring true. Celie, the main character in Walker’s novel, is a perfect example of these observations put forth by Sedgewick. Celie’s social position is indicative of her gender, sexuality, race, and class; as a Black woman living in Georgia in 1910 to 1940, one can expect to witness the general ‘acceptable’ racism present within the novel towards people of color. Despite the ‘acceptable’ racism, the novel accentuates the hardships and struggles the women of color in this novel have to go through. The social positions of the characters, more so Celie and Sofia, in Walker’s The Color Purple are based on the social identities of their gender, race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity.
The novel follows the protagonist, Celie, as she experiences such hardships as racism and abuse, all the while attempting to discover her own sense of self-worth. Celie expresses herself through a series of private letters that are initially addressed to God, then later to her sister Nettie. As Celie develops from an adolescent into an adult, her letters possess m... ... middle of paper ... ... bservations of her situation and form an analysis of her own feelings.