Nettie In Alice Walker's The Color Purple

Words: 237

Pages: 1

In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, the audience is introduced to Celie’s younger sister, Nettie, who is smart, pretty, but very dependent on others. Nettie, who was always praised as the smartest and prettiest of all of the female children in Celie’s family. Even Celie’s father believed this. Nettie is first praised as the prettiest when Mr.___ meets Nettie and wants to marry her, but her father says “Well, He say, real slow, I can’t let you have Nettie. She too young. Don’t know nothing but what you tell her. Sides, I want her to git some more schooling. Make a schoolteacher out of her” (14 PDF). Not only is Nettie the smartest, she is also considered the prettiest. Mr.___ wanted to marry Nettie because of her beauty, and when he sees her

Show More

Alice Walker

Alice Walker “Womanism is to feminism as purple is to lavender,” Walker explained of the crucial difference in inclusivity in Womanist ideology compared to Feminism and The Civil Rights Movement which excluded black woman. Alice Walker, as an activist and black woman writer, is deeply sympathetic with the oppressions encountered by black woman; therefore, she is deeply invested in the uplifting and self-realization of black woman and other marginalized groups through Womanism; an idea that is expressed…

Words 1459 - Pages 6

Gender Roles In The Color Purple

Through the eyes of an enslaved woman, The Color Purple, narrates the story of Celie, who encounters complications along her journey to understand who God really is. The Color Purple is Alice Walker’s third novel published, and it won her the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book award <>. Within the book, themes of violence, religion, defying gender roles and femininity are mentioned throughout. Celie, a fourteen-year-old girl, writes letters to God about her daily encounters because of her repeated…

Words 1641 - Pages 7

The Color Purple Research Paper

The novel, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, analyzes many important themes including love. Through Walker’s depiction of Celie and Nettie’s relationship as well as Mr.___ and Harpo’s relationship, it is evident that love does not conform to gender roles nor stereotypes. The stereotypical romantic relationship is often depicted as a man in power and the classic ‘damsel in distress’. However, gender roles are challenged in the relationship Celie shares with Nettie; Celie sees her younger sister…

Words 527 - Pages 3

Sexism Exposed In Alice Walker's The Color Purple

The Color Purple, a dramatic, edgy, educational, award winning novel written by Alice Malsenior Walker. The novel not only tells a story but opens many eyes to multiple problems African American families faced in this time period. It also focuses on the lives of several African American women who faced abuse and cruelty. Walker shared many views, a contradiction to her personal views but very similar to her personal life. The award winning novel, The Color Purple, is a novel that unfolds in a series…

Words 1074 - Pages 5

The Color Purple By Alice Walker: Literary Analysis

The Color Purple is a story about an African American women named Celie that focuses on the numerous issues she encounters in the deep South. She delivers her experiences through a series of letters that are addressed to God and some to her sister Nettie, who’s a missionary in Africa. Celie writes to God and her sister Nettie because she has no one else. Through the repetition of motifs and symbols, Alice Walker is able to give everything a significant meaning to create various themes throughout…

Words 997 - Pages 4

"The Color Purple" Essay

Haley Ramsey Pd. 9 AP English Independent Reading Assignment Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple tells the story of a woman who struggles through sexual and physical abuse but is able to find her own voice and her true self. Celie, starting off as an invisible powerless being that is abused by many, is able to recreate herself as a “virgin” and develop her own voice and sense of self-worth. By coming to terms with her homosexual feelings for Shug, she is able to find romantic fulfilment…

Words 897 - Pages 4

The Color Purple Critical Analysis

Alice Walker, a National book awardee was born in the year 1944 in the rural lands of Georgia. She was a very studious child from the beginning to a tenant farmer and a housemaid mother and so after completing her graduation ,she won scholarship to Spelman college .She later majored in literature and did further research on Latin history and poetry. Just then three years after graduating, she got her collection of poems published and married a human rights lawyer. Her first novel, The First Life…

Words 2080 - Pages 9

Alice Walker Tone

Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. She worked as a social worker, teacher and lecturer, and took part in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Walker won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1982 novel, The Color Purple, and is also an acclaimed poet and essayist. She brought black women’s lives into primary focus as a rich and important subject for US American literature. Her landmark novel The Color Purple (1982), which drew upon her sharecropper family’s…

Words 1894 - Pages 8

Repression And Rebirth In Alice Walker's The Color Purple

Every woman has an unusual strength to find harmony . Throughout The Color Purple, Alice Walker develops characters from suppression to rebirth. Characters such as Celie found a sense of power through a journey that consisted of self-discovery. Celie was made of rape and her kids were made of incest in the beginning stages of her life. Growing up in a poor uneducated community, causes suppression towards characters like Celie. As the story progressed, Celie began to unfold her true identity through…

Words 757 - Pages 4

The Color Purple Literary Analysis

At the beginning of the novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker, the narrator, Celie Johnson, suffers from psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of her father, Alphonso, and her husband, Albert Johnson. However, by the end of the novel, Johnson realizes her inner strength and comes to terms with the abusive men in her life as well as her place in society. Celie Johnson’s successful struggle to escape the assertion of power by the men in her life reflects the determination of African American…

Words 1847 - Pages 8