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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