The Color Purple – Alice Walker

With a subtle sense of portrayal & neat bringing up of womanhood’s social respect, Alice Walker frames the storyline of “The Color Purple”. It is an epistolary novel , grounded by a set of letters that are written by  Celie’s sister Nettie about her life in Olinka where she takes up the toughest job of teaching uncivilized African Community that has every hint of disrespect towards women. The Women are enslaved by conventional foolishness and think that they are absolutely meaningless to themselves ;  without being married to men & bearing them children, their livelihood is just crap.

Celie, one main character is elevated to the weight of Shug Avery’s Great courage to face every little obstacle that comes her way even when she’s put down and deserted by the society, friends and relatives. Celie Meets Shug Avery when she gets married to Albert, a Widower, who demands her to be a servant and utilizes her for his animalistic pleasures at times; Yet again, its mere bondage to Celie, Albert is someone exactly similar to her step dad.

Celie, at the outset is said to be a 14 year old girl who is sexually harassed by her step dad, a result of which she becomes the mother of two children, Adam and Olivia. They are raised by Nettie, her sister. Nettie, marries Samuel, a Preacher when his wife dies. They strive so hard that they determined to see an immense surge of development in life of blacks. All they wanted is to bring blacks out of that dirty conventional world of absurdity. Nettie regularly pens letters to Celie, however, Albert’s wicked nature hides the bunch of them from eyes of his wife. Finally, Shug finds all of those out, through which the story of Nettie in Olinka progresses.

Coming to Shug Avery, She’s introduced like a big piece of cake, through a photograph to Celie, which in turn kindles the spirit of Homosexual love in her. However, We could argue that the theme of love is not completely lust, because it’s a part of feminism that takes her through paths of happiness thus leading to emancipation. Something sensible, that serves a pivotal point in the novel. In the end, Celie’s enchained submission to Albert, being all the time beaten up to excruciating pain, bursts to freedom, when Shug comforts her by saying “There’s no GOD but Love’s God and its deep down there at every single being’s heart”..  

Sophia, the wife of Harpo & daughter- in – law of Albert, is a symbol of retaliation and independent womanhood, where she’s portrayed by brutally attacking Harpo when he humiliates her physically. The cutting down on abuse in slavery begins just here as she joins hands with Shug as a characteristic to emancipation.

Shug’s determination and her strong feelings towards freedom to women, changes Celie, lifts her high up the society, annihilate’s her inferiority and establishes a firm trait in her to challenge men on a platform of self confidence and employment. The vitality of the title “The Color Purple” lies in the fact that Celie, once on seeing Shug’s Photograph, while she’s attracted by the color of her outfit, that’s undoubtedly PURPLE!, Replies To Kate(Albert’s Sister), that she’d like to get dresses of Purple color as gifts to her excellent Heeding of Home and Children.

A Storyline of Sensible events, carefully woven with the thought of effectively elevating Feminism with ingredients of  Freedom, Equality, Opportunity, Rights and this very tinge of Lust and love in the same gender, undoubtedly being the secret element to magnifying the thematic content of the novel.

The Hairy Ape – Eugene O’Neill

Eugene Gladstone O’Neill is undoubtedly one of the best playwrights in American Literature. He needs unquestionable appreciation for having handled the weapon of Realism skillfully to cut down on the fancy dramatic style. His works generally reflect a sense of distrust and tragic ending.

For years, his work, “Hairy Ape” has been termed as an expressionistic play bringing a great surge of popularity amongst suppressed working classes of the American Society. The play is dramatized by presenting an ocean liner in which stokers strive from dawn to dusk, stooping too low to scoop coal right into the furnace. Humiliated, with no solid identity & bent like an ancient man, the stokers are subject to excruciating physical pain while they are at work.

Yank, the protagonist is “ all Brawns No brains” kinda guy who strongly believes that he is one of the only great symbols of physical strength. However, slowly, his characteristic of being too hefty is diminished by the interference of the thought process induced by the pale and weak, Mildred Douglas, daughter of a steel tycoon. She calls Yank “ Filthy Beast” which hurts Yank in turn depressing him to the extent of avenging her brutally. O’Neill Depicts the transformation of Yank’s characteristics of Being an “Aggressive force “ to a “tHinker” – to which his crew tease him saying “think” when Yank pronounces “tink”.

Also the mental agony that Yank undergoes is heavy and triggers an alarm inside him to register himself in the IWW or the Industrial Workers of the World. The association is pictured as one big community uniting workers of the lower cadre to potentially rebel the capitalists of the society. Objectively, introducing a rule of the suppressed is the elemental thought of the IWW. Yank is arrested by the cops at the Fifth Avenue when he bashes a man at the bustop. Long, his colleague, sows seeds of anti-capitalist thoughts into Yank resulting in the scene at the Fifth Avenue.

The ending sequence gets to Yank, being thrown out of the IWW, for not being able to answer and abide by the rules of the community. Again, his status as a thinker descends, attributes to being stupid. Yank, over again, hurt, leaves to a zoo and encounters a gorilla to which he equates himself stating “the Hairy Ape”. His foolishness does not end just there! When he tries to make friends with the gorilla, Yank is crushed to death.

The Changeover that the hero of the play encounters is subtly explained with the influence of opposing characters. When Yank says he is trying to “tink”, everyone mocks at him saying “Don’t tink, just drink” which is a rhyme scheme yet a broken conversation within the stokers. In the Hairy Ape, O’Neill reveals the truth that change inside Yank sequentially weakens him, putting him to the clutches of death.

O’Neill stages reality and his thematic depiction of the idea is entirely dependent on the style of One-One conversation ( Playwright- audience) eliminating the tools like presentation of dramatic versions. A Cordial approach to audience elucidating the harsh reality of life,degradation of distinctiveness and the search for a new yet real one with the blue collared cader of the society taking the role of presenters, makes Hairy Ape a play that’s worth a million!!