the color purple

In my English class, Professor Lindsay assigned us to read the novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker which is written in letters to God as well as the main character Celie’s sister, Nettie. Reading the novel was compelling as well as enjoyable, but there were many parts of the novel that could be seen as emotional to others. Celie faces many difficult challenges as she grows up into a young lady; including being raped and pregnant by her own step-father. While reading the book, researching different journals, as well as interviews; I came across different opinions of and even victims of the challenges Celie faced as a young woman. In this paper, my objective is to demonstrate how in The Color Purple Celie’s life is an example of rape and incest.

Furthermore, in order to accomplish this objective I split my paper up into three different sections. In the first section, I will discuss how Alice Walker portrays Celie feelings towards carrying two children by her step-father as well as the feeling of being raped by someone who is supposed to be known to care for their children (not hurt them). In the second section, I will use an interview with Oprah, interviewing Gregg Milligan, who was raped by his mother as a child as an example of how Celie’s innocence was taken as a child. I will also use the online journal, “Signs: Father -Daughter Incest” by Judith Herman. In the last section, I will explain how Celie’s view of men changed as her being married to an abusive husband made her stray away from men and start to fall in love with a woman. I will also explain how Celie’s husband is not necessarily raping her, but she feels as if he is because she does not enjoy it. By doing this I will use examples from an online blog by an unknown...

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...on being raped by his mother, he says, “She would make me have sex with her moving my body against hers and if I did not respond physically she would then abuse me”. Walker writes, “You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t” (1), which was said by Celie’s step-father. Milligan stated in his interview with Oprah that when his mother would physically abuse him she would yell “come here”, but when she sexually abused him she would say “Mother needs you”. Both quotes from Celie’s step-father and Milligan’s mother have a connection because they clarify the innocent child was put in a predicament to pleasure their parent whether they had a choice or not. Unlike Celie obviously Milligan did not have a child with his mother, but he states that he felt like a “prisoner in his mother’s bed”. Milligan also clarified that, “if his mother did not orgasm, she would then beat him”.