Karma T Gurung
2PSEng
1313207
American Literature CIA-3
The Color Purple: Race
Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple’ is
set in Georgia and a remote African village during the 1920-1930’s as it was
during this time that the blacks were heavily discriminated. Black women we
constantly beaten, raped, and were victims of all sorts of abuse. Through this
novel the author tries to show forth the living conditions and the treatments
of the Negro community before the civil rights movement. This novel portraits
the African Americans in rural America as victims of racism and sexism and it has
become a controversial novel. It
provoked constant debates and appraisals of its image on the black people in
America.
The
protagonist, Celie is a young black girl who has constantly been abused when
introduced in the novel. She is the daughter of a successful Negro, lynched by
white men for no reason. Celie, however has been living with Alphonso who she
believes is her father. Alphonso rapes and constantly beats Celie and he also
takes away both her children. Celia is soon sold to Mr.__ who also abused her.
The author shows most of Celie’s family and relatives as poor exploited blacks
with poor living conditions and uneducated background hence did not have the
opportunity to travel or better themselves as it was the reality during that
time. They had very few career options. The men worked on the farms while the
women helped with the house work. Nettie and Celie would go to school only when
there were not needed around to do the domestic work. Soon enough Nettie is
also separated from Celie. The characters in the novel live in sub standard
houses away from the white population and have their own church, cemetery and
were served only after the whites in stores. During that time the whites
treated the blacks like animals
Nettie who
was now in Africa fears bringing Celie’s children, Olivia and Adam to America
as they grew up in Africa and never faced racism. Nettie on the other hand had been to both the
countries and knew what it was like.
Amongst all
this there were a few exceptions who were lucky enough to avoid this misery.
Shug Avery lived a better life then the rest as she was a recognised singer.
She travelled alot and was able to earn money. Nettie was also lucky to have
been fostered by Samuel and Corinne who helped her to get an education and a
career. Celie eventually starts her own business and inherits her father’s
property towards the end. But the majority of the blacks were struggling to
survive.
Sofia’s
incident with the mayor’s wife is one of the biggest highlights of the racist nature
of the whites. Sofia, a strong and independent women is made to feel helpless
when she talks back to the mayor’s wife. She is beaten by the whites and sent
to prison and also sentenced to domestic service. Her imprisonment is used as a
metaphor for blacks imprisonment by racism, confined to servitude and
domesticity within their own homes. It seems unfair of the whites to give
Sophia such a penalty for the trouble she had caused. This was only so because
they believed that the Negros were to be treated in such manner. This shows the
suppression of the blacks by the whites.
However, we
know that racism is not inevitable. Walker shows this through the character of
Eleanor Jane. She tries to understand and relate to Sophia and by the end if
the novel she that colour has nothing to do with equality. When she hears of Sophia’s
misery and the reality of the Negros life, Eleanor questions her parents.
We see that
Alice Walker involves the racial issue through two narrative strategies: the
development of an embedded narrative line that offers a post-colonial
perspective on the action, and the use of family relations as a carefully
elaborated textual trope for race relations. These strategies enable walker to
foreground the personal histories of her narrators while placing those
histories firmly within a wider context of race. Though the novel is a work of friction,
it addresses the conditions that most African Americans would have experienced
during that time
Reference:
www.smoop.com/color-purple
www.jstor.org race and domesticity in the color purple
International
Journal of English Language and Literature volume2, issue 1. race ,gender in
the color purple
The Colored
Identity- a close textual analysis of The Color Purple
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