Most Powerful Scenes from "The Color Purple"

**WARNING** Its difficult not to cry while watching these scenes

Celie and her sister Nettie being separated



Celie and Nettie being reunited




-Arielle Cole

Alice Walker speaks for herself

Everyday we find use in something else

"Everyday Use," written by Alice Walker is a short story published in 1973 about a black woman living in the Deep South with one her two daughters. The story highlights that Mrs. Johnson or "mama" and her daughter Maggie still live a traditional rural southern lifestyle. The theme of this short story is the character's connections to their ancestral roots. Dee, one of Mrs. Johnson’s daughters, beliefs her values of her culture are placed on some old quits and other objects around the home.

Alice Walkers short story has many representations of her own culture through each main character in “Everyday Use”. Maggie suffered burn scares from a childhood accident that left her disfigured and very self-conscious of her image. She felt unattractive and lost from the after affects of her burn scars. Like Walker, and her childhood, she experienced an accident similar, which left her with scars and a sense of rejection from her peers. At a young age Walker was shot in the right eye by a bb gun, which left her permanently blind in one eye with a scar. After this traumatic experience Ms. Walker was able to reflect the suffering she went through as a child into a story that represents her past. The theme of this young child and her lost self-conscious relates directly to Walker and her childhood experiences.

Like Dee in the short story, Alice Walker came from a poverty stricken lifestyle that left her striving for education and exploration of her heritage. In the short story Dee is the character that finds the value of the old quits priceless after her return home from school. She believes that this "artwork" represents family traditions and is something that should be valued, not destroyed. Dee represents the idea of what preserving heritage really means to her. Alice Walker has fought for her heritage through the Civil Rights Movement and shares ideas of preserving her lost African culture.

As for the third character in the short story, "mama", Walker is closely relatable. Mama is levelheaded, strong, independent woman who takes great pride in her life. She is able to teach a lesson in each of her incidents as well as trust her instincts and knows what she believes. She is not willing to sub come to the new style, but understands who she is and what her life represents. She illustrates the idea of how living the same lifestyle with no growth has affected the culture that her children have grown up to see.

At the beginning of this short story, “mama” explains that she is a hardworking woman who is big-boned with “man-working hands.” She can do a male’s job on the farm and is proud that she has that kind of power to get what needs to be done. She goes on to explain that she is suppose to be the way her daughter wants her to be, “…a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like a uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights” (Walker 24). Like we have learned in class, women have been faced with a gender role identity. In this time of day, women are supposed to be delicate and let a man take care of all the hard work. Mama in “Everyday Use” exemplifies that woman are more than capable to do handy work around the farm as well as take care of herself and her family. Our lives have been socially constructed from our society as well as our graphical location. Alice Walker makes a statement in her short story that woman, although many times put into gender roles, have the ability to be powerful. She has guided this story away from essentialism in that, Mama, is nowhere defined to what it means to be a woman.

Alice Walker is affecting her culture through the short story "Everyday Use" when she brings up with question of what it means to preserve ones heritage. The question of whether or not the quits represents ones heritage and how that heritage should be preserved for future generations to appreciate. "Everyday Use" is not only about using the quit till it is rags but asks the question of Alice Walkers heritage and how people choose to honor that heritage. It brings up the question of using something everyday and making it meaningful or preserving it and displaying it as a symbol of what heritage means.

Lauren Brous


Walker, Alice, and Barbara Christian. Everyday Use. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP,
1994.

Alice Walker: A woman worth more than a fan page.

Alice Walker has accomplished so much in her lifetime that has been influential to girls and women across the border of identity and race. Her works of art deal with the issues of race and gender as well as value women in our society. Alice Walker’s mother helped to create the astonishing woman she is today by fighting against discrimination and pushing for education for African-Americans as well as women. Alice Walker has experienced a number of hard times in her life including the wound she received from her brothers BB gun. Walker was shot in the right eye by her brother leaving a scare as well as permanently blinded that eye. From this disastrous experience Walker turned into an outcast feeling harassed by her peers. She was able to turn to reading and writing poetry to help her though this difficult time in her life. By the age fourteen, the scar tissue was removed eventually allowing Walker to come to her full potential and no longer hide in misery. She was voted valedictorian, most-popular girl and queen of her senior class. Ms. Walker learned from her traumatic experience allowing her to grow as a woman and value her life. Following her growth she began to care about relationships she built around her and find patients in her daily life. After high school Alice Walker became an activist for the Civil Rights movement during college, which lead her to return south once finished with school. She became involved in fighting for welfare rights, and helping children’s programs in Mississippi. Walker married in 1967 to a white Jewish man, which brought the two to be the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi. This endorsed harassments from peers as well as threats from the Ku Klux Klan.

Her novels and works of art reflect the amazing, intertwined life that she led. It shows the power of young black women an their fight against racial issues. Her work is inspiring to women across the world because of the issues she displays through all of her work including violence and sexist issues. She helps women come into their role and focus on what they have to offer our society.

Alice Walker is 100% worthy of a fan page because of the inspiration and dedication she showed through her life. She fought for what she wanted and understood that life never comes easy. Ms. Walker is a passionate woman who understands the hardships of life while influencing others to stand up for what they believe in. Walker has given many women words of wisdom and has helped display the reality of our culture. I find Alice Walker worthy of a fan page because of her blatant ability to be real. She understands herself, and is more then willing to share her life experiences so that others can grow from her knowledge. Walker is able to depict each part of her life and find a meaning behind everything she has experienced while still teaching others a valuable lesson.

Lauren Brous

Walker, Alice. "The Official Alice Walker Biography." Alice Walker - The Official Website for Alice Walker. 2008. Web. 9 Apr. 2010

The Color Purple

The main plot of The Color Purple is a young African American woman’s struggle through life in the early 20^th century with an abusive husband and separation from her family. Throughout the story, her husband and his children treat the character very poorly.

One theme that is noted is incest and rape. The main character, Celie, is raped multiple times by her father at age 14 and bears 2 children. She thinks that the father has taken the children and killed them in the woods, but at the end of the story it is discovered that the children were sold and Celie is eventually reunited with them.

Themes of race and gender play heavily into this story. Sexual orientation is also brought up in this story, although very conspicuously. The main character, Celie, is not sexually or emotionally aroused by her husband and the reader figures its because he is abusive. But throughout the story it is discovered that Celie is sexually attracted to a particular woman, Shug and doesn’t understand her feelings. Being homosexual back in those days was just unheard of.

Celie’s husband was the stereotypical male and very misogynistic. He thought it was a woman’s job to obey her husband and it was necessary to beat her if she didn’t obey. His son even learned this behavior and was confused when his wife disobeyed him. He became even more troubled when his wife beat him when he tried to beat her.
It was the norm for men back in those days to treat women as if they weren’t equal. Some women even believed it was normal to get beat everyday. This type of thinking was drilled into people’s heads and caused damage to the society.
There were only 2 strong willed women characters in this story. That included Shug, Celie’s eventual lover, and Sofia, Harpo’s wife. Sofia stood up to any man that tried to put her down or beat her. She was even described as being a very big woman who didn’t take nonsense. She even punched the mayor after he slapped her. There was a moment in the story where Sofia showed her strength and expressed to Celie how she felt about having to be so strong throughout her life. She said, "All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fightmy brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child aint safe in a family of men." She goes on to say, "I loves Harpo. God knows I do. But I'll kill hm dead before I let him beat me." Shug was also a confident woman. She never let a man talk down to her. Shug also taught Celie how to love herself. She was not only her lover, but also a mentor who eventually made her into a very strong person. Women like Shug and Sofia weren’t common whatsoever back in those days.

Scene of Sofia telling Celie about her strength


Alice Walker's great great grandmother was a slave and she used her family experiences to influence the characters of this book. In the video below, Alice said she wanted to be a part of her ancestor’s life at a time where she didn’t exist. Writing about life for blacks in the South directly affects Walker's work because that is where her roots are from. Being able to create stories about her ancestors allows her to realize her own strength and the strength of her writing.This book has gotten her the most recognition and prestige. She was the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize.

There was even a movie made in 1985 about this particular work of Alice Walker’s by the same title that stars Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. The film was directed by mastermind director Steven Spielberg and received 11 Oscar nominations.





















There is also a Broadway musical that was made out of this story. I’ve seen both the movie and Broadway musical and I highly recommend them both. It is an important story to tell and it teaches us about how some of our ancestors lived.

Clip of Alice Walker talking about the story

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple: a Novel. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Print.

-Arielle Cole

A Black Woman’s Struggle in Possessing the Secret of Joy

In 1992, Alice Walker wrote a jarring novel called Possessing the Secret of Joy. In this story, a girl named Tashi experiences the loss of her sister who bleeds to death after being genitally mutilated by the tribal circumciser. In the Olinka tribe, the only way for a woman to be of any worth is to be circumcised. Walker describes a circumcision of women as cutting off genital parts, such as the clitoris and labia, and sewing the vaginal hole so that it may become extremely tight. Circumcision is one of Walker’s main themes in this novel. You may ask why these brutal tortures on women are taking place. The unquestioned reason is that “Man is jealous of woman’s pleasure” (Walker 178). The story gives numerous examples of females’ characters who are able to pleasure themselves immensely and don’t require men to achieve this pleasure. This jealousy of quick and easy pleasure makes men feel useless. A good summary of this theory is given by Pierre, Tashi’s husband’s son, who says, “When her outer sex is cut off, and she’s left only the smallest, inelastic opening through which to receive pleasure, he can believe it is only his penis that can reach her inner parts and give her what she craves. But it is only his lust for her conquest that makes the effort worthwhile. And then it is literally a battle, with blood flowing on both sides” (Walker 178).

This mutilation and oppression of women is a major theme that has appeared in numerous discussions in class. Men feel like they need to be the Alpha in relationships, and women shouldn’t be allowed to do anything without men’s approval, including feeling pleasure. Alice Walker’s inspiration for writing this story came from a young African woman who was flown to LA to star in “The Color Purple,” another of Walker’s novels made into a film. This girl came from a country where genital mutilation was still being practiced, and Walker noticed this. It really struck a chord when she realized her ancestors came from that same country and practiced these same traditions in their culture. With the publication of this book, she hoped it would be “used to educate women and girls, men and boys, about the hazardous effects of genital mutilation, not simply on the health and happiness of individuals, but on the whole society in which it is practiced, and the world” (Walker 283). Walker hopes this painful tradition will cease.

Another major theme in Possessing the Secret of Joy is how a place affects one’s culture. Tashi was born and raised in Africa, but claims she is American. She claims, “An American looks like a wounded person whose wound is hidden from others, and sometimes from herself. An American looks like me” (Walker 208). Tashi can’t claim herself as Olinkan, because of the devastation that took place as part of her original culture in Africa. She is scarred, physically and mentally, from relating herself to that place and culture that caused her to become crazy and murder the tribal circumciser decades later. In class, we talked about how a certain place defines a whole culture, which is different for everybody. Tashi’s place and culture is in America, not in Africa where she was born.

In the end, Alice Walker recognizes that RESITENCE IS THE SECRET OF JOY through the character of Tashi as an African-American female.

There is no doubt Alice Walker deserves a fan page. Her desire to save the pain of millions of girls in African countries from being genitally mutilated and oppressed is a brave and huge ordeal to overcome, especially since Walker is able to relate to this experience because it is where her ancestors are from. Her will to resist the traditions of her tribal culture is significant in expressing how strong and individualistic she is as a person. She should be idolized for her courage. This fan page was created to express her priorities to more people so that her achievements will not go unnoticed.

-Nicole Browning

Walker, Alice. Possessing the Secret of Joy. USA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.
Print.

She Is Simply Amazing!!

Alice Walker has shown great commitment to her work. Throughout her childhood, she has faced many hardships that have made her an even stronger writer. She is the epitome of a great writer, either female or male. There was a reason as to why she received both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. Walker knows how to move her readers and make them feel the emotion of the characters in her books or stories. For example, in The Color Purple Walker writes through the perspective of the main character in letters to God.
The moments in Alice’s life that influenced her writing are very critical to her story. She uses a lot of childhood memories to express through her writing. In her biography, Alice describes her experience with being shot accidently by her brother an experience that made more prepared to become a writer. She said she felt, “raped” because of the lie she had to hold in so her brother wouldn’t get in trouble. Walker said that experience made her feel as if she had to forever tell the truth in everything she did because she remembered that painful experience of lying during her childhood (1).

Alice’s experiences in college also inspired her writing. She found her love of travel through Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She was even invited to Washington D.C to hear his “I Have A Dream” speech. Going to a college that was so passionate about civil rights helped Alice understand herself and made her bring up issues about race, class and gender in her writing. Another bad experience that influenced Alice’s writing was her getting pregnant while still in college. She was so afraid of what her parents would think and even considered committing suicide (2). This made her even more of an inspiration because she could relate to other women who experienced this feeling.

Alice deserves a fan page because she is so inspirational. She inspires young girls all over the world because of the messages she brings out in her novels and stories. She is especially an inspiration to young black girls like me. She gives us inspiration to go for our dreams and write about whatever we feel. She shows us that no matter what gender, race or sexual orientation we are, we can follow our dreams and be successful. Alice never held back in her writing, she always told the truth. In The Color Purple she has a rape scene on the very first page of the book. It may shock people, but that is what I really like about her. She’s not afraid to bring up issues that may shock people.

She also said that she is a spiritual person, not so much religious. She said, she’s been into nature since the age of 11. I like how she doesn’t try to force religious beliefs on her readers. She presents the information and allows readers to form their own opinions about what she wrote.

-Arielle Cole


1. Walker, Alice. "The Official Alice Walker Biography." Alice Walker - The Official Website for Alice Walker. 2008. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. .

2. "Alice Walker." Know Southern History :: Main. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. .