Important quotations from the novel "The Color Purple" Name: Cicilia Joseph, Reg.no:- 1313290

CICILIA JOSEPH

REG NO:- 1313290

AMERICAN LITERATURE CIA

2^ND PSEng

IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS FROM THE NOVEL “THE COLOR PURPLE”

INTRODUCTION

The Color Purple was published in 1982 and it won Alice Walker the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. The story explains of an uneducated black woman during thirty years of life, of her suffering and attempts to find love and happiness in life. The novel clearly portrays the violence and sexual subjugation that many black women endured during the 20th century and, as a result, has been disqualified multiple times. There are many important quotations in the poem which are further explained.

QUOTATIONS:-

1. Harpo say, I love you, Squeak. He kneel down and try to put his arms round her waist. She stand up. My name Mary Agnes, she say.

This sentence is from Celie’s forty-first letter. Squeak has just returned from attempt which was a failure to release Sofia from prison. Squeak returns home battered and torn as she was raped by the prison warden. Still, Squeak is not crushed, and she makes a vital act of resistance when she decides to refuse the belittling nickname as Squeak which that Harpo has given her. She insists on having her called by her given name, Mary Agnes. She resists the patriarchal words and symbols that Harpo has obliged upon her by renaming herself. Walker constantly stresses the significance of language and storytelling as ways of having control over the situations and as the initial steps toward liberation. Mary Agnes renames herself to show her negative response to let the man in her life gain interpretive have power over her.

2. Us sleep like sisters, me and Shug.

In her sixtieth letter, Celie is improving from the shock of knowing that Mr. ______ has hidden Nettie’s letters to her. To help Celie conquer her anger, Shug points herself as a very maternal or sisterly figure who safeguards and manages Celie’s outside environment and makes sure Celie does not behave on her instinct to murder Mr. ______. However, though Celie and Shug’s bond becomes more sisterly and familial, the close and sexual side does not disappear. In Shug and Celie’s connection, Walker shows sexuality to be a multifaceted phenomenon. Though Celie and Shug are sexual with one another, they are at the same time maternal, sisterly, friendly, and loving.

3.   It must have been a pathetic exchange. Our chief never learned English beyond an occasional odd phrase he picked up from Joseph, who pronounces “English” “Yanglush.”

Nettie expresses her sentiments to Celie about the Olinka villagers in the sixty-fifth letter. The Olinka conclude that it is a waste of breath to start an argument with men who cannot or will not take into consideration after the Olinka have this “pathetic exchange” with a white man from the English rubber company. The cultural blockade between the Olinka and the English is so gigantic that both parties readily give up with the believe that no communication is possible. Samuel later suggests that the only way he and the other Americans could remain in Africa is to join the mbeles, the natives who have gone deep into the jungle and decline to work for the white settlers.

With this discussion of the fence separating the Olinka from the English, Walker points that, though narrative can be a controlling force, some differences cannot be conquered. Cultural complexities and gulfs of foreignness every so often render communication useless. This gives a sobering counterexample to Celie’s success at finding her voice and using it as the key to her finding of self-worth. Walker accepts that some cultural differences are so enormous that there is little hope for communication. Unluckily, she suggests no answer to this problem.

4. Well, us talk and talk about God, but I’m still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). . . .

Celie remembers for Nettie this conversation with Shug in the seventy-third letter. Celie has told Shug that she has closed writing to God altogether. In reply, Shug tries to help Celie build up a new perceptive of God, which involves sidelining Celie’s idea of a God who is white and male and with whom she feels she has not anything in common. Shug softly suggests that instead of being mad at God for his injustice, Celie should re-imaging God as a figure or entity with which she can more intimately connect. Just because Celie’s picture of an archetypal old, bearded white man will no more do, Shug claims, Celie does not need to refuse God altogether. Shug urges Celie to be imaginative and to see the existence of God in everything and everyone, as a sort of spiritual “it” with no race or gender. Shug’s example is part of a greater lesson that argues for re-imagining one’s oppressing people rather than rejecting them. Shug explains to Celie that she does not need to discard men altogether. She explains that Celie can have men as friends and that her life does not need to rotate around men exclusively. Instead of avoiding men and God, Shug changes the power dynamic by imagining them again.

5. Shug act more manly than most men . . . he say. You know Shug will fight, he say. Just like Sofia. She bound to live her life and be herself no matter what.
    Mr. ______ think all this is stuff men do. But Harpo not like this, I tell him. You not like this. What Shug got is womanly it seem like to me. Specially since she and Sofia the ones got it.

In her eighty-seventh letter, Celie recollects this conversation she has with Mr. ______ near the end of the novel. Their words of reconciliation concern the taking of differences—in gender roles, talents, and sexual direction. The Color Purple concerns a universe in which customarily masculine traits like assertiveness, sexual fulfillment, and physical power are present in female as well as male typeset. Sofia’s assertiveness and power are virtually unsurpassed by any of the male characters, whereas the nurturing and care that Harpo show toward Mr. ______ could be considered feminine.

By the conclusion of the novel, a sort of integration has occurred, as some characters’ masculine traits have rubbed off onto more feminine font, and vice versa. Shug, for example, learns from and reciprocates Celie’s mildness and care, while Celie picks up some of Shug’s sexual forcefulness and follows Shug’s proposal that she become owner of a business, a by tradition male role. Mr. ______ and Harpo, on the other hand, become somewhat feminized. Mr. ______ learns to sew and to be a high-quality listener, and Harpo cooks, changes his baby’s diaper, and kisses his children. By the last part of the novel, it is obvious that Walker sees fixed gender roles as meaningless and impractical.

REFERENCE:-

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/purple/quotes.html

http://www.shmoop.com/color-purple/