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.