The Color Purple Author: Alice Walker | Language: English | ISBN:
1440792305 | Format: PDF
The Color Purple Description
Winner of the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize, "The Color Purple" established Alice Walker as a major voice in modern fiction. Her unforgettable portrait of Celie and her friends, family, and lovers is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, "The Color Purple" is a classic of American literature.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Audio CD
- Publisher: Recorded Books, LLC (June 8, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1440792305
- ISBN-13: 978-1440792304
- Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 6.4 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
"The Color Purple" is one of the strongest statements of how love transforms and cruelty disfigures the human spirit that this reviewer has ever read. Alice Walker gives us Celie, 14 years old when the book opens, who has been raped, abused, degraded and twice impregnated by her father. After he takes her children away from her without a so much as a word, he marries her off like a piece of chattel to her husband, who is so cold, distant and inhuman to her that she can only refer to him as Mr; and this person deprives her of her sister Nettie, the only one who ever loved her.
Celie manages to survive by living one day at a time. Her life is a series of flat, lifeless panoramas painted in browns and grays. Into this existence, if you can call it that, comes Shug Avery, her husband's mistress, who shows Celie her own specialness and uniqueness. A lot has been made about lesbianism in this book and all of it is beside the point. Celie isn't a lesbian, she is a human being in need of love and Shug Avery helps Celie realize that she is somebody worth loving and caring about. When Celie hurls her defiance into Mr's face -- "I'm poor, I'm black, I may be ugly... but I'm here", she is making an affirmation not only to him, but to the whole world; the reader can only say, along with Shug Avery, "Amen".
When Celie finds the strength to leave Mr, he is left to face the reality of himself and what he sees isn't pretty; his transformation humanizes him and allows Celie to call him Albert, recognizing him as a person, as he finally recognizes her as one.
"The Color Pruple" provides a disturbing yet realistic account into the life of Celie, a young black woman with a tragic, abusive past who learns how to survive, how to let go of the past, and most of all how to love. I thought the medium with which Walker chose to write her book was perfect, the diary form of the novel establishes a immediate, intimate connection to the reader right from the start. Walker draws you in from the beginning, starting her book with a fairly graphic, explicit account of the physical abuse Celie's father subjected her to. I find Celie one of the most inspirational characters I have ever read about, she makes you believe that even in the darkest moments one can find hope, because for most women, life cannot get worse than Celie's.
The language used throughout the book emphasizes Celie's lack of educationa and the naivety of a young girl, being black and living in a world where men dominate every aspect of life Celie has only learned how to be submissive, suppresing all her own hopes and dreams. Enter Shug Avery and Sofia, and we start to see the insiprational woman Celie is inside--Shug represents the independent woman that Cleie longs to be but cannot find the courage to become. Through Shug's love and encouragment Celie learns to stand up for herself. She emerges powerful, strong and intelligent.
When I first started to read this book I felt I couldn't get past the first few letters. The violence that Celie encounters is unbearable to read, and sometimes I felt uncomfortable with many of the passages describing the graphic sexual abuse/actions and violence. However as I read on I realized the heart of the story overshadowed many of the disturbing scenes.
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