Pearl Pereira
1313264
II PSEng
Analysis of the theme
of Loss of Childhood and Adolescence in the book The Color Purple
‘But I don’t never git used to it. And now I feels sick every
time I be the one to cook. My mama she fuss at me an look at me. She happy,
cause he good to her now. But too sick to last long’
Celie’s story is a
transcription of her psychological and spiritual growth. Through the device of
letter writing, Walker brings her audience into an intimate communication with
Celie, the principal storyteller in the novel. The above quote has been taken
from the first
letter that our protagonist Celie writes to God. From the
beginning of the book we see the theme of loss of childhood and adolescence
hovering and this makes the reader reach out and feel towards Celie and her
sister Netti.
We learn that Celie is a
young girl of fourteen years of age. From the beginning of the book we see that
she feels like she lacks the apparatus for success and happiness and is an extremely
downtrodden character. Surrounded by other poor, uneducated blacks, she sees
nothing in her race to be particularly proud of. She is constantly
being subjected to abuse and told she is ugly, thus she’s always subjected to
negative energy. She decides therefore that she can best ensure her survival by
making herself silent and invisible. When her mother falls sick she is by default
expected to take care of her younger siblings. She does this without any fuss
as she has been growing up forced to believe that it was her duty. In a way she
never really realized what it was to be a child. Her
love is displayed through selfless sacrifices for her sister’s wellbeing. For
the majority of her life, the protagonist’s only receives love from her sister
and only gives love to her sister. At the age of fourteen she was
constantly abuse to help her step father fulfill his sexual needs. Just at the
tender age of fourteen she faced such traumatic experiences. She knew it wasn’t
supposed to happen but didn’t know how she could escape from it, basically, a
helpless soul. She wasn’t given a chance to prove her intelligence as her step father
always felt that she was dumb. We realize that Celie was never given a chance
to live like a child, never given the chance to be carefree, never given a
chance to feel loved. Her socio economic background snatched away her chance
and right of childhood.
‘My
Mama be dead. She die screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at me.
She cuss at me. I’m big. I can’t move fast enough. By time I git back from the
well, the water be warm. By time I git the tray ready the food be cold. By time
I git all the children ready for school it be dinner time’
Through
these lines we see how much Celie, a fourteen year old had to do. Always
confined to house work she never had the chance to fulfill her needs as a younger
growing girl. She did all the household duties, got her younger siblings ready
for school, took care of her mother and yet had to face all the screaming and shouting.
Another
instance where we see this theme is when Celie writes in her letters about how
she got pregnant twice, by her own step father. So innocent was she that she didn’t
know what was happening to her body. She was so confused about the changes that
were taking place. In one of her letters she says, ‘When I start to hurt and
then my stomach start moving and then that little baby come out my pussy
chewing on it fist..’ We feel so much pity towards this young girl. A fourteen
year old going through pregnancy twice and without any help is a very sorry state.
And when her father kills her first baby and then takes away the second one too
Celie develops a stone cold heart and is void of emotions. This can be noticed later
in the book when Shug Avery asks her if she misses her children she replies saying
‘Naw. I don’t miss nothing’ We see how scarring these events are to Celie.
Instead of having a childhood full of happy memories the words ‘joy’ and ‘happiness’
seem quite foreign to her.
The violence
that Celie faced in her adolescence and early adulthood play a very important role
in shaping her personality. The protagonist
suffers repeated violence from her father and husband and reacts by shutting
down emotionally and being very submissive. Eventually, when Celie
realizes the extent of the emotional violence committed against her, she finds
the strength and the willpower to leave her husband and start a new life.
Events that take place in ones adolescence and childhood
are one of the most influential in developing ones personality. The Color
Purple is a very good example of this. Celies adolescence was snatched away and
replaced with adulthood. This really affected her personality in ways she had
no clue about. Though she grew up to be a loving, god fearing individual the
events that took place in her teenage life would always leave a scar in her
memory. We see that later on Celie is shown love through Shug Avery, a
beautiful and seemingly empowered woman, and
is treated with much more respect which in turn affects her personality as she
feels more accepted and important. She learns to fight back against her step
father and her husband. After Shug moves into Celie and Mr._____’s home,
Celie has the opportunity to be friends with a woman whom she loves and to
learns, at last how to fight back.
All the negative events that took place in the life are
then slowly replaced with the love and support that she gets from Shug. Celie recovers
her own history, sexuality, spirituality and voice.
Towards the end of the book, after all the events that
snatched away her childhood Celie is self actualized and transforms into a
successful, independent woman. She becomes more creative and is more self
expressive. After being voiceless for so many years she is finially content,
fulfilled and self sufficient and later on in her last few letters says that ‘Don’t
think us feel old at all… Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever
felt’.
References
1)
Shmoop
2)
Sparknotes
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