The Color purple by Alice Walker shows the harsh struggles of living as a poor black woman in the early 19thcentury. The book raises many questions from a variety of global issues. We follow the character Celie and watch her develop and change while she experiences racism, sexism, religion love, etc.… The color purple is not written as your regular novel, instead, it is written in the form of letters to God and her sister Nettie.
I find the way that this book is written creates an intimate experience for the reader. the way that the nook is written in the form of personal letters that Celie is writing or reading, along with the fact that we see follow a drastic change in Celie’s character at the start of the book compared to the end. At the beginning of the book, Celie feels as though she has very little integrity or strength after all the traumatic experiences she has gone through. We see this when Celie tells Sofia “I say is cause I’m a fool. I say it cause I’m jealous of you. I say it because you do what I can’t. (p,39) Another thing I noticed is that she also does not sign her letters as if she is embarrassed to put her name beside what she is writing. Towards the end of the book, she begins to build confidence in herself, she leaves Mr.___/ Albert to live with Shug and ends up working for herself once Shug gave her the idea to produce pants since Celie’s pants were the most comfortable and everyone in her band eventually wanted some, and then the community. All of this leads up to her owning her own house, becoming friends with Albert, and reconnecting with her lost sister Nettie. The development of Celie’s character truly personalizes Celie’s character and makes the reader feel more connected with the story.
Religion interested me from the beginning of this book. The majority of Celie’s letters start with the words Dear God. Celie’s relationship with God is what seems to keep her going throughout this book. God is the only person Celie feels she can truly completely open up and talk to about some of her tragic experiences. Celie does not have a voice at the beginning of the book and the only way she is able to express herself is through writing to God. In the beginning, I thought that by the end of the book Celie may become fed up with God not actually helping her while all these horrible things continue to happen to her. But instead, Celie expresses that this is not why she talks to God, instead she all she wants is someone to talk to. It’s interesting to see how God is seen differently for each person. What’s the reason that people worship this God when they have never heard or seen him personally.
I believe that we all believe in something. Whether you believe in it to help coap with something or because you agree with what it stands for. Any God can be viewed in a different way’s through other people, so what’s right or wrong may begin to not matter, if you think religion is wrong from something that it stands for, another person may find it great because of something they see in it that you aren’t focused on. Just because you believe in something does not mean that you must be committed to anything and everything that goes on within it.