Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
criticism of alice walker
character analysis celie the color purple
criticism of alice walker
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: criticism of alice walker
In The Color Purple, written by Alice Walker, Celie's life was falling apart. Due to her step-father's actions, she became pregnant and then quickly had her children whisked away from her. She was sent away to marry a man she didn't know, and experienced more hardships than many could even attempt to fathom. Thankfully, she had her dear sister, Nettie, to think of and lean on both mentally and emotionally even when she wasn't able to be with her physically.
In the beginning, the girl's mother was very sick. Their step-father took charge of the household and he began abusing Celie. Celie, being the oldest, accepted the abuse as a duty and attempted to stand her ground. She wanted to remain strong in order to insure the safety of her younger sister, Nettie. For Celie, the strength she found in enduring the abuses of her step-father remained with her throughout her life. Celie silently held her emotions inside and didn?t speak up in opposition when horrible things were going on all around her. When her step-father wanted to marry her off to Mr. _____, all she could think about was Nettie?s safety, and she never said a single word against it, though she was greatly conflicted in her mind.
After she had been married off to Mr. , his sisters came to visit. They liked Celie a lot saying, ?Good housekeeper, good with children, good cook. Brother couldn?t have done better if he tried.? They weren?t able to see all the activity going on inside Celie?s head, though. She absolutely abhorred living with Mr. _____ and his horrendous children, but she had the strength she acquired from protecting Nettie, and she utilized it to suppress her emotions and in doing so, protect her well-being.
Nettie was able to teach Celie any thin...
... middle of paper ...
... because they had adopted Celie?s children before they had met Nettie and suspected she might have been the mother. All of this, though, was unbeknownst to Nettie.
These two sisters had such an impact on the paths their lives took through their relationship. They provided each other with the strength each required to trudge though the situations their lives laid before them. They taught each other many valuable life lessons and to show love to other people. Even though they were literally oceans apart, they provided each other with a support system of family and friends, and most importantly they gave each other hope. Hope for the present and hope for the future, a future together. If Celie and Nettie didn?t have the intimate relationship they did, they wouldn?t have been able to make it through the trials to finally reach the reward of a life together in the end.
Life is defined by moments and humans are defined by life. We aren’t defined in the sense of how we react to the problems that arise when it comes to our life. Some people are strong and fight. They fight for their life and for all that they stand for. They never give up and will be confident. They still have trials and problems, but they know how to make it through the trials without it controlling them. On the other hand there are the people that don’t know how to fight. All their life they have been given trials that have controlled their lives, but now they have no way to escape. Instead of fight they let everything pass them by. Instead of facing their problems they just pretend it isn’t happening. Their challenge controls them. Celie knows that there are people who fight. Her sister, Nettie fought, but she has no fight in her. It died when every person she loved was taken away. She now has no reason to fight. She wants to live and the only way to live is to be passive and survive. Being passive is all that she can do, until being passive will destroy her. Within the text Color Purple there are three pivotal scenes for Celie, when she meets Shug, while reading the letters from her sister and when she has her own shop.
The Color Purple is a novel that is a series of letters written by a young black girl. The letters are from Ceilie to God and then later from Celie to Nettie and from Nettie to Celie. Throughout the novel Celie tells God and Nettie about the poverty, rape and cruelty that she has endured from when she was a young girl either at the hands of her step-father, her husband, or the whites. She writes these letters to God because she has nobody else to write to. She is alone and she feels that God is all there is to write to. She has been betrayed by everyone else in her life that was supposed care for her.
Celie's mother, in the beginning of the novel The Color Purple, is a very small but effective setting character. Her character flaw was irresponsible parenting because she did not protect her daughter. With this lack of protection, Celie did not have any female role models when she was growing up. Therefore, Celie was not able to become knowledgeable about life and have good female company. Another effect this flaw had on the protagonist was that she had no one to teach her how to understand herself. Celie was unable to realize all of the wonderful qualities of being and becoming a woman. Because she could not appreciate being a woman, she was unable to appreciate herself, and therefore had a lack of self confidence.
2. Write a brief summary of the events that made Celie decide to take control of her life.
In section three of The Color Purple, the main character is Celie. In this section she gains a little more control over her life, begins to express herself through creativity and also becomes more free and independent. Her decision to leave with Shug to go to Tennessee and begin her own pants business is good examples of these things. This section shows how much progress she has made in herself. We learn about Celie through different situations and dialogues she has throughout this section.
Within The Color Purple by Alice Walker, women are treated as inferior to men therefore they must obey them. Through the strength and wisdoms Celie gains from other women, she learns to overcome her oppression and realize her self worth as a woman. The women she has met throughout her life, and the woman she protected since young, are the people that helped her become a strong independent woman. Sofia and Shug were there for Celie when she needed someone to look up to and depend on. Nettie was able to push Celie to become a more educated, independent person. The main source of conflict in this book is Celie’s struggle with becoming an independent woman who needs not to rely on a man. Throughout the book we see her grow as a person and become independent in many ways through her experiences with the powerful women in 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.
In 1983 Alice Walker made history when she became the first female, African-American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and The National Book Award for her novel, The Color Purple (Alice Walker Biography). The book, The Color Purple, also happened to be ranked number 17 on the American Library Association’s 100 most frequently challenged books: 1990-1999 list (American Library Association) The novel is frequently challenged because of inappropriate language, racism, physical abuse, rape, incest, homosexuality, violence, and sexism. The Color Purple is a fictional novel that is told by a poor black woman, named Celie, living in rural Georgia in the early twentieth century. Her story is portrayed through letters that she writes to God and then later on too her sister. In her letters she writes about all the pain, humiliation, and struggles that she encounters throughout her life. Celie’s sister Nettie, whose story is also told through letters that she writes to Celie after she runs away from home is in the book. Through all the pain and suffering in Celie’s life, her letters help her to discover herself and eventually find joy.
Alice Walker was influenced to write this novel throughout her whole life. Walker had a connection with the characters Celie and Nettie, because she was mistreated like Celie and hardworking like Nettie. Also it inspired her to write the novel “The Color Purple”, because she studied civil rights. Also she got invited to the home of Martin Luther King Jr. Walker then worked for the New York City Department of Welfare. More so two years after receiving her B.A. degree from Sarah Lawrence she became a civil rights attorney. The story was a reflection on everything she learned throughout her literary career (Wikipedia On Alice Walker). One of Walker quotes stated, “One thing I try to have in my life and my fiction is an awareness off and openness to mystery, which to me, is deeper than any politics, race, or geographical loca...
In the color purple, we can see how Celie develops an identity for herself throughout the novel. At first we can appreciate how Celie does not longer believe in herself and looses all trust she had on herself. When Nettie gets older, about 12 years old, their father Fonso tries to get to Nettie, but Celie protects her and lets Fonso rape her instead of him raping Nettie. This at the beginning shows that Celie has enough strength to take decisions that will affect other people, however, this strength starts to disappear as the story continues.
When Celie’s mother left, she played the role of a mother to care and protect her sister, but she started to notice that Mr.__ was looking at her sister in a way that she knew was not okay. Nettie was afraid but Celie knew that God had everything in control (Williams). According to Tate, “The novel evolves as Celie, a fourteen-year-old black girl, confides in God through letters about what has happened to her. She has been raped by a man whom she assu...
In the book “The Color Purple” the writer Alice Walker illustrates a story of bravery, struggle and oppression. The main character in the book, Celie, is shown as a submissive women with no intention of changing. Celie turns into a strong independent women at the end of the novel, but first she faces some very large obstacles. Walker, from the beginning illustrates what the story will contain, “ You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.” (1). This quote shows that Celie in a state of oppression due to her outer influences. Her current situation is not sustainable, Celie must find a way out or she will perish in her own misery. Walker makes this point with the quote above, she
...ce of social gender departure releases her from oppression that came with emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. The significant change from her passive self to a feminine assertiveness develops out of her encounter with the people and events that goes against traditional views of social acceptance as it breaks common views on behavior and attributes. The development allows Celie to identify the people around her as the people she loves and care for, essentially becoming her people. The Color Purple becomes a contemporary text that becomes relatable to issues of identity and acceptance as well as addresses the existence of the continuing problem. Just as Celie says at the end of the novel when she narrates the conservation she shared with Mr. ____, the ability to “live her life and be herself no matter what” becomes a capability to her and the other characters.
Celie is not a typical protagonist. In Alice Walker's The Color Purple, the main character Celie is an ugly, poor girl who is severely lacking in self-confidence. However, Celie transforms throughout the course of the novel and manages to realize herself as a colorful, beautiful, and proud human being. Celie becomes a powerful individual.
Alice Walker's use of characterization in her novel The Color Purple depicts her main theme of female empowerment and the importance of maintaining an assertive voice. The tyrannical male characters, the victimized female characters, and the development of the protagonist, Celie, express Walker's firm views of female independence in a male dominated society. Her feminist views have been influenced by her experiences with discrimination as an African-American woman as well as her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. These experiences serve as an inspiration for developing the character Celie, a young black woman discovering her own sense of self while battling a male dependent environment. The progression of civil rights for black women that existed throughout the twentieth century mirrors the development Celie makes from a verbally debilitated girl to an adamant young woman. The expression of racism and sexism that evidenced itself during the postmodern era presented Walker with an opportunity to compose a novel that reveals her strong animosity toward discrimination. Without these outlets, Walker would not have had the ability to create a novel with such in-depth insights into the lifestyle of an immensely oppressed woman.