Gloria Rose - CliffsNotes on Walkers The Color Purple

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Alice Walkers The Color Purple weaves an intricate mosaic of women joined by their love for each other, the men who abuse them, and the children they care for.

In the first few letters, Celie tells God that she has been raped by her father and that she is pregnant for the second time with his child. Celies mother is quite ill and after cursing Celie, dies, leaving Celie alone to face her father. Celie then turns her attention to protecting her sister, Nettie, from her fathers sexual advances. Celie soon marries Mr. __________ (later called Albert) after her father strikes a bargain with the older widower, and Celie finds herself in a loveless marriage, caring for her husbands four children and being regularly raped and beaten. Celie becomes fixated on Shug Avery, a glamorous blues singer who is her husbands mistress. Several years later, Celie eagerly accepts the responsibility of nursing Shug back to health, thus beginning a lifetime of friendship and love between the two women.

The oldest of Celies stepchildren, Harpo, marries an independent young woman, Sofia, and soon after, Celie encourages Harpo to beat her into submission, just as all men have beaten Celie. Sofia later confronts Celie about this betrayal, but that confrontation leads to a deep and enduring sisterhood, and Sofia remains an independent, strong woman throughout the novel. The two women create a Sisters Choice quilt togetherthe symbolism of quilts permeates much of the novel. Just as scraps of cloth come together to form a new, strong, useful product, so, too, can black women come together to forge a similar strong and useful bond.

Sofia later punches the towns white mayor, an act that lands her in prison and snatches the independence she so values. By this time, she and Harpo have split up and taken other lovers, so the women in Sofias life take on the responsibility of releasing her from jail. An alliance forms between Celie, Shug, Sofias sisters, and Squeak, Harpos mistress. When trying to help Sofia, Squeak is raped by her uncle, the prison warden, but in telling her friends about the rape, she becomes stronger, insisting that she will no longer be called by her nickname and beginning to compose her own blues music. Sofia is able to leave prison, but she finds herself caged nonetheless, working as a maid in a white household.

Meanwhile, Nettie has become a missionary in Africa and has written countless letters to Celie, all of which Albert has hidden. Nettie, in spite of her upbringing, is a self-confident, strong, faith-filled woman. When Celie discovers Netties letters, she not only catches up on her sisters life, she also discovers that her own two children are alive and living with a missionary couple with whom Nettie works. Netties letters about their shared African heritage are a tonic to Celie, who becomes stronger and more self-assured every day. That confidence soon turns to furyover her rapes, her beatings, and the love and affection the men in her life have kept from her. Netties letters also demonstrate parallels between Celies world and the African world, including the bond that can develop among the multiple wives of African men, the deep friendship and love that exists between two women, the deep love of a man for a woman, and the unrelenting structure of sex roles.

With her new-found strength, Celie confronts her father, whom she has just learned is her stepfather and not a blood relative, and this brings great relief to Celie, who now know that her children are not her brother and sister. She also confronts Albert, leaves him, and moves to Memphis to live with Shug, a move that stuns and pains Albert. In Memphis, Celie, who started wearing pants when she gained her strength and self-confidence, opens a business as a pantsmaker. Later, after Shug has taken on a male lover, Celie visits Albert, and they develop a new bond that eventually grows into love and respect.

Nettie, still living in Africa, marries the now-widowed man who had adopted her sisters children, thus becoming a mother to her niece and nephew. Later, when Celies father dies, she and Nettie inherit his home, creating financial freedom for the two women. At the novels end, the two sisters are reunited, while Albert and Harpo have learned to take on new roles in the household and in their relationships.

Note that the novels title is alluded to in Letter 12, when Celie associates the color purple with royalty and longs for a purple dress. But the title undoubtedly comes from a passage near the end of the novel, in which Shug says that she believes that it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and dont notice it.

The Color Purple is not an easy book to read because it is not written in the style of most novels. Walker does not tell us everything about the characters and the setting and why the characters behave as they do. This novel consists of a series of letters, none of which are dated, and in order to have a time frame for the novel, we will have to read through it carefully, watching for clues about social attitudes, clothes, and other telling details.

Only after finishing the book do we realize that the letters begin in a time when people ride around in wagons, and when the letters end, people are driving cars. Thus, the time span of the novel is about forty years.

In addition, we soon realize that there are large gaps between letters, sometimes five years, but this information is not revealed by Walker herself. We gather this information from clues within the letters and by comparing letters. Walker does not write as an all-knowing, omniscient narrator, filling in the gaps and giving us background. We must rely on our own close reading and on the details that the women who write the lettersCelie and her sister Nettiegive us.

There is yet another difficulty in reading this novel. We begin with Celies letters and we encounter a language problem. Celies letters are not written in standard English. Celie writes her letters in nonstandard dialect, what Walker has called black folk language. Thus, at first, Celies language might seem awkward to some of us, but most readers respond to this novel more immediately if they read the letters aloud, especially Celies letters, listening to Celies voice.