Celie, Shug, Sofia: The Written Aspects of Alice Walker in her book: The Color Purple

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In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, she portrays all of the women with different characteristics. Celie is shy and timid in the beginning, believing she is ugly, but in the end she overcomes her fears and gains a confidence in herself. Sofia is a strong-willed woman, who won’t let anything bother her or get the best of her. Shug Avery is confident in herself and while she may seem to have an uncaring demeanor, underneath she is a kind person. Throughout Alice Walker’s life she has been through so many things and her way of dealing with these things are to write about them. In The Color Purple, Alice Walker invested facets of her life into the main female characters.
When she was eight years old, Alice Walker began writing and said “With my family, I had to hide things, and I had to keep a lot in my mind.” Later on in that same year, Alice was shot in the eye with a BB gun pellet which blinded her in the eye, scarring and blinding that same eye. Because of her eye, she felt that she was ugly, she became timid, and would often react to statements that were not meant to be insulting. I feel that Alice Walker based the character Celie off of this time in her life. In the book, Celie is repeatedly told that she is ugly and that she is not good enough. Celie is afraid of the cruelty others have imposed upon her and she is shy and avoids conflict. Alice Walker once said “What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.” Celie does not understand why others treat her harshly, thus she remains afraid of it. It seems that once we understand what brings up down, it only empowers us. In the conclusion of the book, Celie finally overcomes her fears and tells Albert that she is leaving him. Just like Celie, Alice Walker eventually overc...

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...nything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.’” With each tale she spins, Alice Walker weaves a little piece of herself into the fabric of the story. This is one of the things about Alice Walker that makes her work so significant, because her stories are not like something someone just made up. She writes her books so that you understand what life was like for her, and it makes her stories all that much more relatable.

Works Cited

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/20/books/books-of-the-times-if-the-river-is-dry-can-you-be-all-wet.html http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/story.html http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alicewalke146802.html http://www.poemhunter.com/alice-walker/biography/ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alicewalke382390.html

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