...community and their marital life. In times of trouble, these characters sought refuge from the cruel treatment of both their communities and their husbands. But both characters had different forms of refuge. Hester shut herself off from the community of Boston, while Celie confided in her close female companions to help pilot her life. These perspectives of refuge reap different results. The characters of Hester Prynne and Celie share similarities in their marital life, both character’s husbands are cruel and heartless people. But, the characters differ in social...
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...2001 South University Thesis: Celie, an abused child and wife, Shug, a strong independent woman who was once a town whore, and Nettie, the sister of Celie who left the United States to become a missionary teacher. All these strong women need affection and love, and bond together to find their own voice. Celie’s story is about an abused child and wife who finds her independence. Celie was a slave to her husband and his children. Celie is able to gain her own security with the help of Shug and her sister Nettie’s letters. Celie finds independence and courage after years of abuse and other incredible obstacles. Nettie’s story is about a woman who left the United States to study becoming a missionary and hopes one day to reunite with her sister again. Nettie finds a good family and leaves the United States. B. Nettie keeps writing letters, hoping her sister will one day read them. III. Shug’s story is about a strong independent woman who was once the town whore and seeks love from men and helps Celie find love and courage to live on her own. Shug’s father did not want her to sing sinner’s music. B. She is known as a whore, but she presents herself as a strong and determined woman . In the novel The Color Purple, Alice Walker creates a woman who faces struggles and hardships as a child and as an adult. This story is narrated by Celie, the main character who has never be loved by no one but...
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...COLOR PURPLE: LIFE OF CELIE Margaret Njigua Northshore Community College Psychology 118 Professor Stanga April 14, 2014 The Color Purple is a novel that was written in 1982 by Alice Walker. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name. Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the life of women of color in the southern United States and addresses numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. Born in 1895, Celie who is the main character was raised on a farm in a small town in Georgia where formal education took a back seat to physical labor and household maintenance, and the Church was the main focal point of socialization among local town members. The Color Purple chronicles the startling tragedy and triumph of Celie in her struggle for self-empowerment, sexual freedom, and spiritual growth in the early twentieth century. Its winter 1909 and Celie is fourteen years old. Her step-father, who she thinks is her real father, sexually and verbally abuses her. He impregnates Celie and she gives birth to a girl, whom he steals...
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...part of a study-abroad program. She graduated in 1965—the same year that she published her first short story. After college, Walker worked as a social worker, teacher and lecturer. She became active in the Civil Rights Movement, fighting for equality for all African Americans. Her experiences informed her first collection of poetry, Once, which was published in 1968. Better known now as a novelist, Walker showed her talents for storytelling in her debut work, Third Life of Grange Copeland Walker's career as a writer took flight with the publication of her third novel, The Color Purple, in 1982. Set in the early 1900s, the novel explores the female African-American experience through the life and struggles of its narrator, Celie. Celie suffers terrible abuse by her father, and later,...
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...The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, is a story that follows an uneducated black woman, Celie, during her life, through her suffering and attempts to find love and happiness in life. Celie seeks to gain power over herself and struggles to from the power of her father and her husband Mr.___ – later known as Albert. Shug Avery a friend and lover help her get the power. The message in The Color Purple is that there are certain qualities a woman needs in order to avoid being treated wrong. In order to avoid being treated wrong woman need to be brave and sometimes would have to do things that could cause fights. Having support will lead to being treated right since people are there for you when you need it. Another way is having hope. Hope prevents ending life! Women’s main objective is to be brave so no one treats them wrong! At first, Celie was treated badly by everyone and was scared of men in the book “He beat me today cause he say I winked at a boy in church. I may have got something in my eye but I didn’t wink. I don’t even look at mens. That’s the truth. I look at women, tho, cause I’m not scared of them. Maybe cause my mama cuss me you think I kept mad at her. But I ain’t. I felt sorry for mama. Trying to believe his story kilt her”(Walker,5). Celie is basically scared of men because all her life she has been beat by men. This makes her not look at men because she sees them as evil since they all treated her bad. When someone takes action from being harassed, abused...
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...generational and acculturation status” (Cross-Cultural Care, 2012). The human service professional can deliver tailored services and care that caters to diverse beliefs, behaviors, and value systems. Team B will examine characters Celie and Mr. (Albert) in the movie “The Color Purple.” This essay will define the cultural issues or problems of Celie and Mr. (Albert), develop a plan for the delivery of culturally competent services to the characters, develop culturally competent strategies to address those issues, explore the richness of cultural diversity, and the benefits, and drawbacks as portrayed by Celie and Mr. (Albert). The movie “The Color Purple” is an adaption by Steven Spielberg of the novel written by Alice Walker. Walker addresses the issues of sexual abuse, domestic violence, and how these unhealthy traits do not have to be passed on to future generations. The character Celie is an African-American woman who was uneducated, emotionally and physically abused, raped, and bared two children by her stepfather. Celie’s stepfather gave the children away after they were born. Celie’s stepfather gave her to Mr. (Albert) who was looking for a good worker to take care of his children and help out on his farm. Mr. (Albert) married Celie...
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...narrative, where Celie is reading Nettie’s letters. This is Nettie’s third letter written chronologically, although it is the fourth ready by Celie; this reminds us of Celie’s presence as she is choosing the order to read the letters in. This letter was written just after Nettie left Celie, within the first fifteen letters of the novel. At this point in Celie’s life, “Shug Avery is coming to town!” and it is the first time Celie properly portrays her excitement within her letters; although contrastingly Nettie is at her lowest, this delineates the differences between the two sisters lives. It is written early in Celie’s narrative but it is not told by Celie until later, by this point Celie has developed, she has begun to find her voice and she has built up a network of women; hence she is able to provide Nettie with the strength she requires, whereas earlier in the novel she would have required the strength from Nettie. In this letter, Nettie explains that Samuel will not let her visit Celie, since he believes it is wrong to “come between a man and his wife”. We know that Nettie has grown anxious at this point because she formally states with the use of a modifier, “By now I am almost crazy”, it is evident that writing to Celie is holding Nettie together. Nettie’s letter is reported through Celie’s first person narrative within a single letter. The voice of Nettie is reported as direct speech, though without the conventional punctuation. The implication is that Celie is presenting...
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...In The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, Celie, Nettie, and Mr. are developed gradually throughout the novel and their actions all seem to be intertwined and what happens to one of them effects one if not both of the other two. There is a strong relationship between Celie and Nettie not just because they are siblings but because Nettie is one out of two people Celie loves, and this doesn't exist between Celie and any other of her siblings. There are various things that bring these two even closer, one being the discovery that they both come from a different father which Celie discover from a letter from Nettie which reads "...and I pray with all my heart that you get this letter, if none of the others. Pa is not our Pa." (182) and the one they thought was there flesh and blood father was actually only their step father. This brings them closer for it is so important and they are each other’s direct relatives for both parents are dead and they do not have any other brothers or sisters. The second point is that they keep in contact when Nettie is traveling to and from Africa. This is more or less an escape for Celie for she does not really have anyone except for Shug that she loves so the letters are a way for Celie to keep not only with Nettie but also her two children that she has only seen for a for a couple of days in her entire life. So the main bond between Nettie and Celie is one of love, and they demonstrate this by constantly trying to stay in touch even though...
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...would be safe to say that the men were as slave owners and the women were treated as slaves. Celie, being the main character of the book, endures every form of abuse from individuals in her life that should have been showing her love. Everyone abused her except her sister Nettie, whom she found herself trying to protect from their father. Celie’s mother abused and cursed her, even while being on her sick bed because her husband, Celie and Nettie’s father, desired to have sex with Celie more than he did with his wife (Celie’s mother). Marriage is a union between a man and a woman although in today’s society in some states it could be man and man or woman and woman. However, within the traditional marriage, the man is said to be the head of the household, especially within the Christian faith. Marriage consists of God, the husband, and then the wife which is how it was intended to be. In this context, historically, the men within a marriage ruled or oppressed the wife. The wife had to do whatever her husband demanded of her. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple explains the marital oppression of women, which included an older widowed man who is given a younger unattractive wife by her step-father after asking for the more attractive daughter for marriage. Chanequa Walker Barnes of Duke University Library states, “The Color Purple is a story about pain and, ultimately, triumph.” Being that Celie is the unattractive child, she endures violence, rape, and the lack of love from those who...
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...American woman by known as Celie, who is trying to survive and discover herself in her reality. There is no one that helps her, no one to talk to her, and no one to educate her on life. From beginning to end you can see Celie’s role as a wife and mother change from dependent and weak to independent and strong. It is even sadder when Celie’s husband, Albert, treats her like dog scrap. Albert is displayed as an abusive partner who repeatedly beats and rapes her until his satisfaction. The whole novel is centered around a woman’s life and how she survived life in the early 1900’s. A lot of Domestic Violence occurred when women would be “out of line” in the household. The man had full rights in the past to physically “punish” their wives. Men would exploit the fact they made money and use it against women. Women were also just given into marriage to different social classes. Usually the richer could choose whoever they wanted as their wife or slave. Married life was painful for Celie. She had to raise Albert’s children, take full control of any house chores, endure unenjoyably intimate nights with her husband, and take unnecessary beatings from him. Women would be sexually harassed and abused throughout their lives and it was represented in the movie. In the movie Celie’s first letter to God, we learn that she has been raped by her father, Alfonso. When Celie was young her mother became very ill and therefore couldn’t please her husband sexually. Then as Celie is outside one day,...
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...Alice Walker presents her ideas of love and marriage through the character in ‘The Color Purple’ and their relationships. Each character’s perception of love and marriage differs in the prime of the novel, yet as we progress and witness the trials and tribulations they endure, we see their ideas distort and reshape, or strengthen. Throughout the novel we are given a mixed bag of types of relationships, some are love-starved, others are brimming with love and some are only short bursts of love. From the early chapters of the novel we are given the fundamentals of the generic relationship back then; dominant male and submissive female (there is also the exception of Shug and Celie, even then it seems that Shug is more dominant than Celie). Most marriages throughout the novel aren’t particularly joyous; we rarely saw any love and most, and even when we do, violence is used to control their other-half’s behaviour. There are a few stable relationships that prevail, for example Nettie and the Reverend. With the different marriages that we encounter I believe that Walker is implying that marriage wasn’t so much to do with how much you loved the other person, but much to do with how much you could grow while being with the other person, or how much labour one would have to do while with their spouse. One message I feel that Walker is trying to depict is that marriage was just an institution that does not do much other than give men and excuse to control women. Another is that marriage...
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...similarities between both the novels is the setting the books are in. Both are set in the deep South.”To Kill A Mockingbird” was set in Alabama, while “To Kill A Mockingbird” was set in Georgia. The year would be around the 1930’s. The time where slavery was very much going on. A difference that Scout and Celie was they were both on different sides of slavery. Scout was white, while Celie was black....
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..."Once the Bleeding Begins, the Healing Can Begin"-Tori Amos www.welcometobarboados.com Oppression is defined as the use of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel and unjust manner. When someone is physically and/or mentally oppressed for having a belief or belonging to an individual group, it can be individually demoralizing and degenerizing. Unfortunatly, The human race has been known to enforce their ability to oppress people through many avenues such as an individual belief in religion, a physical handicap or the way an individual may dress. However, for this essay, I have looked closely at specific females that were oppressed through unequality in specific to their individual race, social heirarchy of power, and sexuality. Unequality between male and female has been seen all over the United States. For example, American females finally were given the right to vote in 1920. In a racial sense, whether male or female, black and white people were segregated in public up until the 1950s. Financial status determined your ranking on the social hierarchy of power granting an individual the ability to have a great influence or to f. dFinancial status was signifigant; higher amounts of incomes meant one had a strong influence in society and respect was demanded. All of which were based on the norms of the time. Currently The United States of America does enforce laws that restrict physical harm onto others and enacted an equal opportunity act, thus enabling all Americans regardless...
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...who abuse them, and the children they care for. Celie, a nearly illiterate black Georgia girl, writes letters to God, telling him that she is only fourteen, but already treated like a house working mother. She is busy every day with cooking, cleaning, and caring for a lot of brothers and sisters because of her mother's failing sickness. To make things worse, her father has raped her. The Color Purple is more than just entertainment because the story shows what poverty in the old days was like, especially among the colored people and the hard way of life created from the white man. This novel deals with real life situations which no one would talk about. As a little girl, Celie is frequently unprotected to abuse both verbal and physically. She thinks that she can fight it off by keeping it to herself and god. She feels that if she’s invisible enough, it’ll go away. Her sister Nettie has written countless letters to Celie, all of which, Albert, also known as Mr. as Celie identifies him, has hidden. When Celie discovers Nettie's letters, she not only catches up on her sister's amazing life, she also finds out that her two children are alive and now living with a couple that Nettie is also staying with. Nettie's letters...
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...The Color Purple The Color Purple describes the obstacles and progression of the chief character Celie, an unschooled teenager who is the object of mistreatment. In a series of writings to God, Celie narrates her life as she evolves from a timid mistreated spouse to a self-assured liberated woman. Celie’s story fundamentally begins as a consequence of her ill-treatment. As a fourteen year-old girl, she is repetitively physically and sexually abused and then told that she is ugly. As a result, Celie chooses to maintain her continued existence by being silent as well as invisible. The novel starts with the memory of her father’s order that Celie remain quiet about his abuse of her, “You better not tell anybody but God. I’ll kill your mammy” (Walker 1). In her first letter to God, she asks for direction for the reason that she does not comprehend all that is happing to her. In her early teens, she is carrying her second baby. Celie’s father turns to her for fleshly gratification since his wife, Celie’s mother is sick. Celie believes her father took her first baby and murdered it in the woods. She then assumes the second child will endure the same fate, “He took it. He took it while I was sleeping.” “Kilt it out there in the woods; kill this one too, if he can” (Walker 2). However, her baby was not murdered and Celie suspects that as an alternative, her father sold the baby to a married couple, “but I don’t think he kilt it. I think he sold it to a man and his wife over Monticello”...
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