Nmae: Britneys T.

Bitalac
Assessment Task 15: Literary Analysis

The Color Purple, Alice Walker's 1982 novel, is a feminist work about the battle for

empowerment of an abused and ignorant African American woman. The work was hailed for the

complexities of its female characters as well as its expressive usage of Black English Vernacular.

The Color Purple follows Celie, an African American teenager raised in rural seclusion in

Georgia, as she learns to defy the crippling self-concept imposed by others. Celie recounts her

life in profoundly honest letters to God.

The work is told from the first person point of view of Celie, the protagonist. It illustrates

Celie's maturation and self-realization as she fights persecution and abuse to reach fulfillment

and independence. Gender equality is also addressed in the work. It depicts a variety of moods; it

begins with a sad and melancholy tone but eventually becomes soothing and optimistic. The

main themes of The Color Purple are skin color, religion, and letters.

Moreover, The Color Purple's main theme is gender. We observe gender dynamics from

various perspectives. We also see race, religion, and a variety of other subjects. Alice Walker

narrates the entire story through letter writing. The Color Purple's epistolary technique takes on

three important narrative perspectives. Celie's letters to God come first, followed by Nettie's

letters to Celie, Celie's letters to Nettie again, and Celie's letter to "Dear God" comes last. Dear

stars, trees, sky, and dear peoples. Because the main narrator Celie is an illiterate southern girl

who does not know how to spell many words correctly, the diction is primarily vernacular. Her

low literacy can be seen in her spelling of words like tuberculosis as "two berkulosis" and her

usage of the pronoun "us" when "we" should be used.

 Furthermore, The color purple represents beauty, particularly natural beauty. When Shug

states that walking past the color purple in a field and not noticing irritates God, she is alluding

to missing out on appreciating the beauty of nature all around us. Celie goes on to consider the

creativity required to make the color purple, admitting that she had been so preoccupied with

God that she had missed to recognize creations like the color purple and marvels at where it

comes from.

Finally, in this novel, Alice Walker depicts the cruelty, neglect, and oppression

that a black woman faced in the early twentieth century, but she also depicts how a woman must

battle back to regain the self-esteem and confidence she lost in her adolescent years. The Color

Purple is a narrative about love nurturing growth, endurance, and combat.