RELIGION

R.KESHAV

1313208                                           RELIGION

Religion is just an institution for some but to Alice Walker it was something beyond human understanding. Throughout the novel ‘The Color Purple’ we can see how religion as such transforms celie as a person. In the whole novel we can see how celie write’s letters to god and nettie and interestingly her first letter in the novel is “dear god” and also her last letter is also “dear god”. Every letter starts with “dear” dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, and dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God. This encapsulates celie’s religious and spirituality side. Celie began to writing letters to God in order to survive her father's sexual abuse. Even though ‘The Color Purple’ is a fictional novel after reading the novel people often compare the protagonist ‘Celie’ to Alice Walker. Throughout the book, Alice Walker develops a concept of God that moves beyond the rigid God of Christianity. It is Walker’s vision of God that directs each scene. Within the book, God and the characters constantly change for the better. Celie redefines her notion of God as she interacts with people and in turn writes her observations in her diary as letters addressed to God. The vision of God developed in the novel enables Celie to survive and even be happy as she nurtures a spirituality that embraces her strengths and weaknesses while she grows and changes as a person in an often brutal and perplexing world. In the beginning, God is an abstract, authoritative, and dependable figure to whom Celie can share herself to. With white skin and a white beard, he will be there for Celie as long as she believes in him. When Celie tells Shug that she will stop writing to God because he doesn’t listen, Shug teaches her something very significant. Shug does not tell her to imagine a black God instead, nor does Shug simply tells Celie to keep believing in God because God will return in the way she remembers him. Rather, Shug tells Celie to feel loved by God by being herself, by appreciating herself. Shug explains that one doesn’t find God in a church but through oneself. This perspective challenges the general view of God in their society, as though God is someone who can be visited or expected to come when called or as though God is some white old man with a white-grey beard. Shug shows her own love for God by loving the things around her. She appreciates the world, from her own sexual ecstasies to the color purple she finds in nature. For Celie, God moves from being a person to being something (not someone) inside Celie, a goodness that inspires. Celie learns that she writes from her own view of the world and that every view must be challenged and not taken for granted. Whatever people may think about God, whether the Bible says it or not, Celie learns to find her own meaning in God. Throughout her written letters, we see her writing, perhaps rewriting, her world and the divinity it expresses. Still, it is not until the end of the novel that she most fully sees what she has been doing all along: creating her own story. One has a certain power and responsibility in creating a world or judging a world that has been created by oneself or someone else. But, here Alice Walker not only talks about how spiritually she changed and how her perspective about religion changed. She also is trying to tell us how the Negro community as a whole lost their faith on god. The Negro people have directness, a down-to-earth approach. They are honest and straight from their heart in their approach to religion. God is not a commodity, but friend and the best friend. Unlike the white people to whom religion, spirituality and God has been institutionalized. They worship God for their own selfish ends. Their love for God is need and commercialized and there is a stipulation that we can reach God only through the institution of Church. And over the years this Church did not accept black and the marginalized class have been pushed over the pale of the Church for one reason or another. So God for the black people is their very own and without any medium and they sometimes realize God to be existent in their very beings. They live and breathe with God without any external help or appendage. The church is also very symbolic over her to the title. In Christianity, color symbolism is primarily used in liturgical decorations (banners, vestments, etc.) and to a lesser degree in Christian art. Symbolic colors are rarely used in the Bible. So, the color purple symbolizes pain, suffering, and therefore mourning and penitence. Purple is the liturgical color for the seasons of Advent and Lent. Alice Walker even with her title tells us how much the Negro community have suffered and not just how she suffered. One of the major theme is religion and the whole novel revolves and changes in accordance to Celie’s letters to GOD.

REFERENCS:
Lewis, T. W. III. “Moral Mapping and Spiritual Guidance in The Color Purple.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 73. (1990 Summer-Fall). 483-491.
Christophe, Marc—A, “The Color Purple: An Existential Novel. Critical Essays on Alice Walker. Ed. Ikenna Dieke. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. 101-107.
Thyreen, Jeannine. “Alice Walker’s The Color Purple: Redefining God and (Re)Claiming the Spirit Within. Christianity and Literature, Vol. 49 (Autumn 1999). 49-66.
http://jeriwb.com/literary-criticism-the-color-purple-alice-walker-19007/
http://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-color-purple/themes
http://www.crivoice.org/symbols/colorsmeaning.html