Celies Pain in Alice Walkers Color Purple Essay -- Color Purple Essa

Celies Pain in The Color Purple Molestation is a topic that is painful to think about, and even more awkward to write about. Yet Alice Walker chose this as the central theme of her novel The Color Purple. Walkers work centers around a poor African American young womanfriend Celie. Celie keeps a diary, and the first section of the novel is an excerpt from her diary. After reading the excerpt, the reader comes to realize that Celie is a fourteen-year-old girl who has been molested by her father. Through this, she has lost her sinlessness as well as her self-worth, evident when the reader sees that the diarys words have been altered to say I have always been a good girl as opposed to I am a good girl. From the moment her father molested her, Celie ceased to see herself as a good person. The events following the molestation hardly serve to lower Celies confidence and hurt her relationship with her father. Her sister Nettie attempts to protect her, Nettie being the closest thing to a best friend that Celie has at this point. Nettie is the solely person in Celies life who cares enough about her to stand up to their father. The first time I got big Pa took me out of school. He never care that I love it. He say You too dumb to keep going to school. But Pa, Nettie say, crying, Celie smart too. Even shake off Beasley say so. Nettie gets Miss Beasley to go to the house to convince Pa She see how tight my dress is, she stop talking and go The way Celie writes in her Diary reflects her lack of education and mark status. She writes in the most basic and colloquial language that she would use when speaking. She spells many words incorrectly such as git and Naw. She also uses her words in the wrong tense saying I say instea... ...Purple. PMLA 106 (1991) 1106-15. Berlant, Lauren. Race, Gender, and Nation in The Color Purple. Critical Inquiry 14 (1988) 831-59. Bobo, Jacqueline. Sifting through the Controversy information The Color Purple. Callaloo 12 (1989) 332-42. B utler-Evans, Elliott. Race, Gender, and Desire Narrative Strategies in the Fiction of Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker. Philadelphia Temple UP, 1989. Froula, Christine, The Daughters Seduction Sexual Violence and Feminist Theory. Signs 2 (1986) 621-44. Hooks, bell. Writing the Subject practice The Color Purple. Reading Black, Reading Feminist. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. impertinent York Meridian, 1990. 454-70. Shelton, Frank W. Alienation and Integration in Alice Walkers The Color Purple. CLA Journal 28 (1985) 382-92. Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York Harcourt, 1982.