How Does Alice Walker Present Religion In The Color Purple

In Celie’s mind the forces of god and the forces of men are one in the same. After Celie’s stepfather, whom she believed to be her

surroundings which is exploited within the first couple letters Celie writes to God. In letter 5, Celie writes “A girl at church say you git big if you bleed every month” (Walker 5). In this quote, Celie writes about what a girl at her church told her about getting pregnant. Walker uses low diction to convey how little comprehension, Celie has of the world and society she lives in. For example the word she uses for being pregnant is“big” (Walker 5), this exposes Celie's child like mentality, because when a child sees a pregnant woman they see that woman as being bigger. Also the way the word get is spelled in the letter, Alice Walker's inclusion of this shows Celie's low education and shows that Celie has probably never

suppression of her personality of who she was. she was just a person who cooked and cleaned and took care of the children without any consideration given to her. She is uneducated because her father took her out off school as a result of her pregnancies. Celie is raised in an environment where she wasn't allow to have a mind of her own because her father dominated and controlled all her actions. For example, Celie writes letters to God because she has been warned by her

She declares in letter no 73 to Nettie “ I don’t write to God no more , I writ to you . ( Walker 192). This is a significant point in Celie’s spiritual development. At the condition of unbearable pain of her mind and body , she comes to conclude her God faith.

The occupations of characters also have symbolic meaning and represent not only the social status of each person but also the strength of the individuals. Sophia becomes a servant and is subjected to the status that Harpo has fought with her to achieve. She is the symbol of the indecisiveness which needs to be fought against. Shug is independent because she works for herself. She represents a confidence in life and is a strong individual . The similar independence is offered to Mary Agnes when she becomes a singer like Shug. Mary's decision is a symbol of ability to change one's own life and reach some

Celie becomes a different and stronger women towards the end of the book compared to when the book started. “I think I can’t even remember the last time I felt mad, I say. I used to git mad at my mammy cause she put a lot of work on me. Then I see how sick she is. Couldn’t stay mad at her. Couldn’t be mad at my daddy cause he my daddy. Bible say, Honor father and mother no matter what. Then after while every time I got mad, or start to feel mad, I got sick. Felt like throwing up. Terrible feeling. Then I start to feel nothing at all” (Walker, Alice). Celie has been hurt so much she has basically become numb to life. She never gets mad because she knows there are more difficult problems in life. She used to get mad at her mother and father but now realizes she should not do that. “I have daydreamed not fairy tales but of falling swords, of putting guns to my heart or head, and of slashing my wrists with a razor” (Alice Walker). After Alice kept having those daydreams, she then later went to Spelman College on a scholarship. Celie and Alice both end up living a better life than the past and getting what they deserve. They learn that there are worse situations in the world and they have both been through one of those events and that they should never take anything for granted.

Sometimes life brings experiences of abandonment through difficult times. Celie shows an expression of abandonment from God with her intimate friend Shug Avery, who challenges Celie where she thinks God is. “What God do for me?...He gave me a lynched daddy, crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t see again...The God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgetful and lowdown...Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you. Let’im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place” Celie said in anger (192). It is times like this that society tells the world to push life’s disasters under the rug. When instead it requires the attention of others to become endured. To be human is to go through the struggles of life and face them. Without them, life can become meaningless. Celie experiences this through oppression and her loss of faith in God. Throughout

She writes letters to him telling him about her life as if he was her best friend. She tells God, how she feels and how other people caused her to feel throughout the book, even if she believes God may never listen to her, she still writes to God as a stress relief. Shug Avery, a famous singer who later becomes Celie's closest friend, tries to help her with her problems with Mr__ and she tries to make Celie believe in herself and believe that she is pretty and valuable. Celie refuses to believe she can be pretty since she has always been looked down at and told by men she is ugly. She tells God about Avery and how she is the only person who has ever loved her.

In the beginning Celie’s addresses her letters to “Dear God” (p. 1), but when the exposure of her sister's existence, she begins to doubt God. Ultimately, closing a letter to God with “You must be sleeping” (p. 178). During this complicating time, Celie writes to her sister signing her letters with “amen” (p. 199), little later with “amend, your sister Celie” (p. 219), and finally “your loving sister, Celie” (p. 250). Gradually, Celie finds true happiness and develops a new restore sense of spirituality.

Alice Walker shows the love that women have for each other, and the men who abuse them. She portrays a act of envy and disgust from men towards women, in one scene you see the main character, Celie, spitting into a gentleman's cup. In the beginning, you see her having

At the end of the novel Celie has finally created a permanent life for herself.  The way she interacts with the other characters and attitude towards things has

As a result of these tragic events, Celie writes to an unknown audience, resembling her unknown identity. In the beginning, the only person she can talk to is God. She writes her first letters to God shortly after her so-called father raped her. Each one of the letters is short, choppy and has a similar rhythm. The patterns found in her letters symbolize her state of mind; she feels depressed and weak. "Celie does not think of her letters as anything else than just that, as written documents saying the things she wishes to tell the recipients she cannot speak to in person”, making God the person she has always wished to communicate with (Boynukara). Her letters in the beginning are also mostly written to God and not signed off, illustrating her lack of identity. Her conception of God is a “Big and old and tall and graybearded and white. He wear white robes and go barefooted” (Walker 195). Celie’s first letter proves that she has a low self-confidence when she writes, "Dear God, I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me." (1). According to Janoff Bulman, “cognitive strategy used to make

Celie is able to accept her past and establish a clear vision of herself and fulfillment through the acts of love. She meets other women who tell her that she should stand up for herself and fight, but Celie feels that it’s better to survive than to fight and risk not surviving. However, there are certain triggers that lead Celie to stand up. Like a true fighter, Celie proves herself to be willing to stand up for the people she loves. Even as a downtrodden victim of her Pa, Celie sacrifices herself and offers herself to her father so that he keeps his hands off of Nettie. As mentioned in this quote, where Pa is sexually abiding Celie, “First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around. Then he grab hold my titties. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it. ” (Walker, 4). Celie has the potential by putting her efforts into other people, but not realizing she is able to stand up for herself the same ways he does for Nettie. Relating it back to the novel, “Beloved”, Sethe does the same representation when she is trying to save Beloved even though the idea is bizarre of her killing her own child, but she only does it so that she would not have to suffer the way Sethe did. Celie is introduced with Shug Avery a blues singer, who she was first found “rude”, but as the story moves along, Shug Avery becomes the reason Celie learns to love herself. Because Celie is finally opening herself up by loving someone, Celie becomes more lovable. Through Shug’s love, Celie begins to realize her own self-worth, from the minute when Shug Avery wrote a song for Celie, as said in this quote: “This song I'm bout to sing us call Miss. Celie's song.”(Walker, 73).By the end of the novel, Celie loves more

<br>We observe Celie's gradual spiritual development throughout the book from the point when Shug arrives to the very end when Celie first addresses her letters "Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear everything. Dear God." Her journey can be

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