IB English A1

The Color Purple shocked me – at first. What with all the vulgarity from the get-go, the language put me off balance, making it uncomfortable to read (especially with Mr. Macknight narrating for the class). Also, the grammar/vocabulary was exceptionally terrible. I understood that it was attempt at embodying a less-educated, black woman of the earlier 1900’s – and a good attempt – but it took some getting used to. After adjustments and bracing took place, reading The Color Purple became easy.

I’d first like to point out and discuss the boldness of the novel. Now, by “bold” I mean “holy heck, I was not expecting that, and I kind of wish I wasn’t shown that, but now that I’ve seen it I guess I can also find some truth in it.” I felt The Color Purple’s bold voice as soon as Mr. Macknight started the first letter to God. My stomach shrunk inward, my breathing grew rather stifled, and I could feel the blood rushing to my face (also a side/main effect of our school lunches). To be perfectly honest, I do vouch for women’s rights and I am very aware of the cruelties of man throughout history, but learning the facts as history is different from hearing them through a story and a victimized character. Reading through Celie just made it all the more real and unsettling. Automatically, I was put in a position of sympathy for Celie and shame for my gender. It was humbling though. Saddening.

The relationships confused me though. Greatly. Simply all the cheating and infidelities, they were met by responses that were… not enough? It was strange to see the calmness of Harpo towards Sofia’s new man, and of Celie towards Shug’s sudden appearance. Not to say that Celie actually had any feelings for Mr. ___, but she treated it quite well and adored Shug instead. While she was having sex with Mr. ___. More confusing bits circled around the incident of Sofia’s arrest. Sofia punches Squeak and leaves in a huff with her man, only to be arrested soon after. Immediately, Squeak decides to take care of Sofia’s children, showing almost zero remorse towards Sofia, at all. She even goes as far as to visit her uncle, the warden, to help Sofia, and ends up getting raped. All for Sofia. It was extremely awkward to read and rather unbelievable. And also Buster’s strange tendency to just stick around waiting for Sofia was not expected. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the Color Purple has a world with alien values and expectations to me; alien not only in that I have never experienced them, but never fathomed them either.

Still, with that single “complaint”, I’d have to say that it was a good novel. Good because it touched real close to home on a tragic, real-life scale. Good because it expressed in such interesting and powerful ways. Good because, hey, it wasn’t about snobby rich women looking for adventure and eventually getting themselves killed. Straight up, Mr. Macknight. Straight up.

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The Colour Purple was a refreshing break to our streak of novels based on well-off, beautiful ladies with charming husbands and an affinity for suicide. It was also a huge shock, opening the book to its first page and going “holy wow, this book is going to be intense”.

First of all, The Colour Purple lived up to my expectations of intensity. Celie went though horribly tough times, with her abusive step-father, abusive husband and almost losing touch with her sister, Nettie. Celie was an amazing character to me, and that’s not only because unlike the heroines in our previous novels, she doesn’t waste time pitying herself. Celie’s a tough cookie. She makes the best of her crappy situations and puts up with people mistreating her. Despite her confused voice in the first few pages of the novel, I find her to be a strong and independent character.

Speaking of characters, Harpo was one that really confused me. Sometimes, I find him admirable, for being respectable to Celie and his wife. Sometimes, I find him despicable for beating Sofia. As Alice Walker said in that podcast, he’s very torn between being a man as his father was, and respecting his wife as he knows he should. In that sense, I find him to be such a realistically-written character. As with people in real life, I have trouble judging whether I truly like him or not.

We haven’t had much material to discuss sexuality or gender preference yet, and I like to bug Allyne. Shug and Celie’s relationship makes me wonder, whether Celie is attracted to women because she is homosexual, or if she is attracted to women because she trusts only them, as opposed to men. Without Shug, would Celie have found somebody to love?

Lastly, I want to discuss Celie’s voice versus Nettie’s voice. Although Celie’s uneducated, her grammar and spelling poor, I believe if she could write the way Nettie does, their voices would be almost identical. They come across to me as so alike, in their thoughts and actions. I think it is their experiences that really set the two sisters apart.

Quick recap: The Colour Purple was intense. I liked it, I liked the way it was written, I liked the way the material was shocking and inspiring. I especially liked the happy ending with everybody reunited and one big family; I didn’t expect that. I enjoy unexpectedly happy endings.

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The Color Purple is a very good novel indeed. Although the beginning is a little disturbing, the story turns out to be great! It is a very vivid novel that tells of something almost everyone is aware of now: the prejudices that existed (and to a certain extent, still exists) in the US. After reading about the book, sometimes I still have a hard time trying to believe that the society then really was like that: physical, psychological and sexual abuse everywhere.

I really like how there is a wide variety of characters in the characters. There is Celie, the initially ‘weak’ and ’submissive’ protagonist who gets abused by her father and her husband. Then there is Sofia, the ’strong’ and ‘determined’ character who stands up to what she believes in. There is also Nettie, the educated and loving sister of Celie. Not only does this variety of characters make the story more realistic, it also sets the plot in motion: characters learning from each other, striving to be better and stronger.

There are two main prejudices in the story: Gender and Race (as we mentioned in class). My thoughts while reading was : which is the more important one in the book? I’ve tried to think it through, I can’t come up with an answer. They are both important to the story as a whole.

Gender and sexuality plays a major part in Celie’s development as a character. Because she is abused by men since young, she looks toward women, and it is due to this that her sexual identity becomes that of a lesbian. Gender and sexuality also presents itself in the novel in other characters. Mr. Albert, for instance, turns into a ‘feminine’ character after Shug and Celie left him. He cooks, cleans and even sews later on. Also, Shug and Sofia are both rather ‘masculine’ characters, shown by their determination, independence and uprightness.

Race is also very important to the novel. White people are portrayed of having education and well-off families. Blacks, on the other hand, are usually portrayed as uneducated and poor. Although initially having a pessimistic view on blacks, Celie changes and appreciates the blacks after reading of the rich culture of the Africans there from Nettie’s letters. Another interesting point regarding race is the portrayal of God. As most Christians around me are associated with the West (generally White people), even I came to think that God is White and holds the image of an grey-bearded man (similar to Dumbledore). It is interesting, therefore, to see how Shug changes all this. Instead of picturing God as a White man, Shug’s God is everywhere and everything: God is genderless and universal. In the end, Celie’s view of God also changes: her final entry is addressed to: “Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God.”

An interesting point to note about the plot is that love is so fickle and inconsistent. There have to be at least 10 different romantic relationships in this short novel! However, some of the relationships are important to self-realization, such as that of Celie and Shug. Tying love with marriage, the marriages then were hardly ever associated with love. If anything, marriages then associated more with money and raising children. Due to this, marriages do not last. Therefore, I believe that marriages in the society is meaningless. What’s the point of marrying when it’s going to last for a short while? For example, Harpo and Sofia gets married but separate with different partners later on. Perhaps it was so because marriages then were simple rituals and did not require any legal papers of the sort, hence it was easy to break off a marriage. Almost all the marriages in the book do not fare well: Mr. Albert and Celie, Sofia and Harpo, Shug and Grady. In fact, the only marriage that I can think of right now that actually lasted for a while is between Nettie and Samuel. I have one question regarding the idea of marriage in the novel: Why does Celie choose not to accept Mr. Albert’s late proposal near the end of the novel? Has she changed so much that she wants to be independent now? Or is it because she still fears men?

The last thing I want to discuss about is the color purple. I was a little confused about what it was at first, but after Jun explained it to me, I think it’s interesting that the color purple is everywhere, but we just can’t see it.  It is the color purple that gave Celie hope that her sister is still alive. It is also the color purple that changed Celie’s view on so many things. It changed Celie’s life. I just wish I could be more like Celie, able to appreciate the color purple and be content with life.

To finish off, The Color Purple is a really good read: short, simple but also full of ideas and questions. 9/10

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When I began The Color Purple I didn’t like it because of the language. I thought difficult language was essential for an English A1 Higher work. But I soon realised that the story, and the questions raised by the story, was the important part. As the language played a vital role in conveying Celie’s voice and presenting her character, it was invaluable to the story. I fell in love with the characters, especially Celie, just like Alice Walker did. I’m not exactly sure why, but her diction definitely plays a part, as does her resilience to adversity and her ability to love and forgive.

I think Ian and I had a very similar response to the passage about God, where Shug and Celie discuss what God is. I also very much enjoyed the scene where Albert tells Celie about his thoughts about life because it so clearly demonstrates how thinking and reflecting can so dramatically alter someone’s personality and outlook on life. I think the paragraph on page 288 starting with “I think us here to wonder, myself” had the most impact on me because I realised that I’m never going to find the answers to the biggest questions, but I should keep looking for them because I’ll find many other important answers in the process. It also made me realise just how young I am and how much learning and thinking I still have ahead of me.

I’m so glad we finally read a book about a strong, respectable woman. After To the Lighthouse, Anna Karenina, and especially The Awakening, I think I was definitely starting down the path to misogyny. I’m exaggerating of course, but my outlook on women had definitely been affected. I think it’s safe to say this book helped me get back to where I used to be before reading about all these self-indulgent emotional messes. This is one reason why The Odyssey is so amazing: Odysseus and Penelope are both awesome! My attention span is waning and I’m running out of things to say about The Color Purple. I think for the first time after reading a book I feel more about than I think about it, which is a strange experience for me. I’ll have to pursue this interesting phenomenon later.

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My first impression of this book was pretty bad. The opening was simply disturbing and I didn’t want to read it. But, as we all know, books we read in the IB are not like that from beginning to end. In fact, there was only a small portion which I could not bear. It was an easy read, but it was very interesting.

One thing I remember about this book the most is Shug’s explanation about God. Celie explains God as a ‘man’ and “Trifling, forgitful, and lowdown.” I think many people think this way, wondering why the almighty, for example, allows catastrophes kill many innocent people. This makes God look terrible, but Shug does not look at ‘it’ that way. “Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. . . . They come to church to share God, not to find God.” “God is inside you and inside everybody else.” These quotes really struck me when I first read them as it shows a completely different view of God from Celie (a white man), but made even more sense to me. Instead of God being an individual looking down on earth, ‘it’ is everything. This new idea which Shug taught me was further emphasized in Celie’s last entry: “Dear God. Dear stars, dear tress, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God.” To answer the question why God allows bad things to occur, I believe the answer is ‘Because God is Everything’. It is sorrow, but it is also happiness. I feel that I now understand why so many people believe in God, (but I am still an atheist, so I do not believe in his/her/its existence).

Another aspect of this book I found interesting and struck me the most out of all the novels I have read, was how Celie changed throughout the book. She was pessimistic (which is obvious) and had many negative views, but at the end she seemed like a completely different person. What was it that changed her so much? I believe that Shug played an important role as her love gave Celie a new perspective on life. But I did not really care about HOW she changed, but rather the fact that she did change, and this taught me that we can move forward, no matter what burden you may carry inside of you (I know this is a naïve statement as people can get scarred terribly, but I want to believe in this possibility).

Now that I have written this personal response, now I feel how heavy this book is to me.

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The colo(u)r purple was one of the more interesting books we read this year. At first I found it to be quite obscene because of all of the profanity, especially when Pa rapes Celie near the start of the book, but after more abuse and harassment was repeated I got used to it, I realized that this was the world that the characters lived in. I learnt a lot about the culture at the time, I knew some general things about the period of time that the story was based on. I knew it was bad, with mistreated women and racial discrimination, but I didn’t think it to be as bad as Celie put it, perhaps she had one of the worse childhoods compared to others.

I found religion to be something of importance in the book. Celie’s first letters always started with “Dear God”, but after finding Nettie’s letters she started to address her letters to Nettie. Shug influences Celie to start to think more about religion, instead of picturing God as an old wise white man, Shug pictures him as an omnipotent and omniscient power which includes “eveything” in the world. Celie starts off with ideas of religion being the Christian ones that she has been taught, but after she experiences more troubles and hardships she starts to break free and think of her own God, one that the Church does not perceive. As a result, Celie develops more spiritual faith and becomes a stronger individual. At the same time, a similar transformation is happening in Nettie as she starts to learn more about the Olinka and their beliefs she starts to develop her own beliefs of Adam and the “naked people”. The colour purple (Not the book) appears to symbolize this individuality, and freedom which develops within Celie. I believe that if she were to be asked what her favourite colour was, she would most likely answer purple. She paints her room purple. and makes purple pants for Sofia, who is a strong individualistic character. This change in ideas not only happens in Celie, but also in Mr._____ everyone in the book is changing towards becoming a stronger individual.

There were so many relationships between people, people were always marrying and remarrying with each other. No-one seemed to mind this infidelity, when Sofia came back with the Prizefighter, or when Harpo finds squeak. Of all the relationships, the only stable one was the one between Celie and Nettie which never broke apart. It must have been the traumatic experiences that they went through which made them so close to one another. Even though there was so much happening, the characters still stayed strong, especially Sofia who was incriminated a long time for nothing serious. Even though the whites constantly press them down, these people always rise back up again. Their lives are still thriving after every negative experience.

This book was a great read, it was also the easiest book to read so far, 100 pages could be finished in no time. Despite this though, there was one thing I was wondering about. When Celie and her friends are in Harpo’s house they all hear a humming sound that gradually grows louder, no one knows what it is except Celie. What is this sound? Other than this question, I think I am satisfied with this book because it gave me a whole new insight into a different world, one that I never would have imagined to exist in real life.

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