Diction In The Color Purple

The tone throughout the story is hopeful yet useless. The diction helps create the tone by utilizing negative words with the assistance of wishful thinking. For example, Celie uses phrases such as “he can’t stand me no more”, “I’m evil and up to

From childhood to adulthood, Celie despises men, simply because the treatment she endures from her “father”. In her early teens, Celie was raped and abused by a man she assumed was

Celie, the narrator and the protagonist of the story, is a young African American girl who lives in the south. She is poor, as well as uneducated. She lives with her step father, Alphonso (Pa), her mother, and her younger brothers and sisters. Celie began writing letters to God to escape the brutality and pain her step father causes her endure on a daily basis. Celie tries her best to keep her younger sister, Nettie, away from the abuse of their father by persuading Nettie to marry a middle aged man, Mr. _____. However, Pa refuses to allow Nettie to get married, saying that she was “too young, no experience. Say Mr. ____ got too many children already (Walker, 6).” However, when Mr. ____ returned, Pa offered him Celie’s hand in marriage. Celie was then taken away from her family, most importantly Nettie, but unfortunately she did not escape the constant abuse.

You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman. Goddam, he say, you nothing at all.” (Walker, pg75). Celie’s is still oppressed by her relationships with authoritative male figures and her sense of self is yet to be discovered by this point in the

As Nettie receives opportunities Celie could never fathom, their relationship comes to a halt. Celie stops receiving letters from her sister and is left to take care of her husband’s obnoxious children from a previous marriage, and is verbally/physically abused on a daily basis by both her husband and his children. Celie’s husband has a torrent affair with Shug Avery, a blues singer with a practical mentality who does not endure any mistreatment from anyone, regardless of their gender. When Shug Avery falls into Celie’s care, Shug Avery teaches Celie a thing or two about self-confidence and the strength she must find within herself to stand up to her husband. Towards the end of the novel, Shug Avery encourages Celie to leave her husband and move with her to Memphis, where she can escape the pain of her past and for once in her life be happy.

One time when Mr. _____ is asked by his son Harpo why he beats Celie, he tells him “Cause she my wife. Plus, she stubborn. All women good for- he don’t finish.”(23) She tells God about how “He beat me like he beat the children.... Cept he don’t never hardly beat them. He say, Celie, git the belt. The children be outside the room peeking through the cracks. It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That’s how come I know trees fear man.” (23)

According to Harold Bloom, “For Celie, the practice of addressing God simply reaffirms her solitude; she is essentially writing to herself” (Bloom, and Williams 77-88). This submissive practice nonetheless carries over onto her daily life, and ensues until her relationship with Shug Avery strengthens. After Celie begins to experience a spiritual, emotional, and sexual awakening as a result of this bond, her letters reflect her newfound emotional capacity. Bloom enforces this ideal, claiming, “Shug is the route through which Nettie's letters are restored” (Bloom, and Williams 77-88). With the figurative resurrection of her sister through Shug’s support, Celie’s power of voice grows. She begins to think for herself and express her thoughts more vividly, claiming, "My life stop when I left home, I think. But then I think again. It stop with Mr._______ maybe, but start up again with Shug" (Walker 85). The audience, who was Celie’s only recluse for thought, views her becoming more verbal and opinionated in reality as well; for instance, during her final standoff with Mr._______, she exclaims, "You a lowdown dog is what's wrong, I say. It's time to leave you and enter into Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need” (Walker 207). Celie, therefore, has discovered the act of standing up for herself as a person. Nettie’s letters possess a distinct voice as well, and the discovery and instigation of communication between the two sisters liberates the voice which

Celie began her life in a desperate situation, her father lynched and her mother terminally ill which left Celie as the oldest caretaker. To the detriment of the family's fate, in this time of vulnerability Alphonso assumed the fatherly role left open by Celie's father's early death. Unfortunately, Alphonso was not satisfied with the companionship Celie's mother could offer and his eyes fell on the maturing Celie. Alphonso sexually took advantage of Celie, then to protect his reputation he threatened her, "You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy" (Walker 1). Terrified to further the destruction of her already dilapidated family, Celie turned to God to hear the outpourings of her sorrowful heart. Alphonso was the first to strip Celie of her opportunity for friendship, denying her the opportunity to speak with another person that could console her in a time of pain and confusion. This forced isolation molds Celie into a timid, censored woman; even her letters to God are short and muddled in the transcription of her memoir. After years of confessing the tribulations of her life to God, Celie loses faith in her friend, God, upon reading the letters from Nettie that convince her she will never lay eyes on her sister again, she declares

Her parents look at black people as if were born as slaves for white people, but then next generation knows how to respect people not for their ethnicity but for who they are. The author showed the struggled of Celie and

Young woman named Celie, has confessed events of her life in many of her letters to God in her journal, unveiling the truth behind the closed gates of the treasured state of Georgia. In the beginning of her journal, she explains how her father had raped her and got rid of her children. The only way she could express her feelings was writing since she was threatened by her father to never talk about it. She is later married off and lost contact with the only person whom she loves, her sister Nettie. In the marriage, she is forced to take care of her husband and clean. In one of her many letters she reveals that she has found hidden letters by her husband “Mr.__” from Nettie. This is why Celie had began to think she was dead. Celie explains that

One skill a reader can gain from reading this novel is understanding how the themes connect with each other through the use of comparisons. Rather than make each topic a separate issue, the book links them together to show that not everything is a black and white issue, but rather one that is full of grey areas. Similar to untangling 5 pieces of string, trying to solve one of Celie’s problems cannot work without figuring out how it affects her other ones. Although I understood that the novel’s themes are hard to analyze and find a solution to, creating a simile to connect the main idea helped me comprehend the hardships that Celie had to overcome to become

The main female characters is described as innocent and fragile. However, her innocence is ripped apart by the hands of male figures in the novel. Celie, the main character, expresses how women do not obtain the meannesses a man has as she is “beat[ed]...cause he say I winked at a boy at church (1).” Celie never lived for herself, she was a selfless character whom Walker used to expresses how the men in her life are toxic to her. Although Celie lacks the ability to fight for herself in the beginning in the novel, the sistas -the female character around Celie- protect her from the ones that hurt her the most, including herself.

Celie Johnson is forced to endure enough physical and mental abuse to break anyone’s spirits, but this strong willed individual refuses to allow her tragic life to consume her. Miss Celie, which is what she is called by the few who do respect her, somehow learns to live through her father and her husband’s denouncing cruelty and continues to be a sweet and an understanding woman. The most obvious characteristics of Celie are her continuous strength, her ability to deal with hardships, and her instinct to keep fighting. Her undeniable strength comes with protecting those she loves. She teaches herself to take all that is forced upon her because she has never known the feeling of living an easy life. Celie has had to fight for her happiness, alone, from her younger years into adulthood.

Celie’s importance to this novel as a protagonist and narrator is to inform and walk us through her past and how it affects her future. Celie survives her stepfather who rapes her multiple times and steals her babies so she can never see them. When her “father” rapes her, it ruins her as a child and will scar her mentally, emotionally, and physically. After her rape by Alphonzo, he says “ You better not tell nobody but God.” That is why she turns to writing letters because she is telling God about what happened and her life ever since then. Because she was raped, her self-esteem will begin to decrease and fear men and can not tell someone no because she does not know how “numb”. Celie then loses the ability to express herself and have normal conversations with people and open herself up to other people. She decides that if she is quiet and invisible

        Having lived a life of devastation, abuse, rape, and incest, Celie accepted her life of oppression and chose to let her voice speak through pen and paper. We are introduced to Celie as a young fourteen-year-old girl who is poor and uneducated. Her letters are written in black folk English.  The style of the consists of short, choppy