The Color Purple Essay Research Paper Celie — страница 2

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will see each other again. Instead of writing letters to God, Celie begins to write to Nettie. Through their correspondence, Celie learns that her children are alive and that Nettie is helping to care for them. The hope of someday seeing her children, also gives her the strength to continue on. When she finally has enough courage to leave Mr. ____ and go to live with Shug, she lays into her husband like no one has ever seen her do before. It is as if all her years of frustration, anger and feelings of worthlessness all come out during the announcement of her impending departure. Celie said to mister, You a lowdown dog is what s wrong, I say. It s time to leave you and enter into the Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need… You took my sister Nettie away from

me, I say. And she was the only person love me in the world… But Nettie and my children coming home soon, I say. And when she do, all us together gon whup your ass (p. 207). Once out of the abusive environment of Mr. ____ s house, Celie grows and becomes self-sufficient. She starts her own business as a clothing designer and does quite well for herself. Then, with the unexpected death of her stepfather, she finds out she is the rightful owner of the land he has been living and profiting off of. Suddenly, her life has changed for the better. Through her strength and the support of Shug, she has overcome the many obstacles in her life and discovered that she is worth something to others and to herself. She is even able to develop a healthy relationship with Mr. ____ , after he

realizes his cruelty and begins to respect Celie. In her final letters to Nettie, Celie signs her name, which shows she is proud of whom she has become. Celie becomes a success, and in the end is reunited with her sister and her children. She is able to offer them more than a home; she is able to offer them a healthy place to live. The Color Purple’s strategy of presenting an alternative (Celie’s economic success) to the real, (lynching of Celie’s father) had indeed aimed to critique the unjust practices of racism and oppression that was present through out the novel. In the novel’s own terms, American capitalism thus has contradictory effects. On one hand, capitalism veils its operations by employing racism, using the idea of race to reduce the economic competitor to a

sub-human object. On the other hand, the model of personal and national identity with which the novel leaves us uses fairytale explanations of social relations to represent an alternative world. This fairy tale embraces America for providing the black nation with the right and the opportunity to own land, to participate in the free market, and to profit from it. (Alice Walker, The Color Purple) When discussing the economic alternative world illustrated in The Color Purple Celie situates herself firmly in the family’s entrepreneurial tradition; she runs her business successfully. Where her father and uncles were lynched for presuming the rights of full American citizens, Celie is ironically rewarded for following in her family’s entrepreneurial interests. Celie’s shift from

underclass victim to capitalist entrepreneur has only positive signification. Her progression from exploited black woman, as woman, as sexual victim, is aided by her entrance into the economy as property owner, manager of a mall business, storekeeper – in short capitalist entrepreneur. (Alice Walker) Indeed The Color Purple is a fairytale; a world in which sexual exploitation can easily be overcome; and a world of unlimited access to material well being (Hooks 223). By emphasizing on the letter dealing with the lynching of Celie’s father and the last letter of the novel establishing Celie’s economic independence we have illustrated the real and alternative worlds in relation to the economic prosperity of the black individual (Hooks 270). Thus creating an illusionary fantasy

world by combining or mediating between the novel’s social realism and its alternative. Celie’s closing sentence: “Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt” (p. 295) is deliberately replacing her very first utterance, “I am fourteen years old,” (p. 1) with an assertion of victorious control over the context in which she speaks. Celie commits herself to the production of a new age but ascribes no value to the influence of her past history or on the culture (Kramer 113). Throughout The Color Purple, celie clearly had a struggle with mister. When Celie first got to mister s house, she was not accepted. Mister s children knew that was not their mom, and did not want anything to do with celie. Her struggle with mister were long and painful, which did