Analyzing Alice Walkers Unique Perspectives in The Color Purple
If Alice Walkers fiction, The Color Purple, had a thesis, I believe it would be that until mankind stops assigning gender and race to its Gods, mankind will not stop sexual and racial oppression and abuse.
Two ageless and current issues Walker immediately presents in the novel are God and sexual child abuse. They are introduced through the voice of an innocent child coping with terrible abuse and hardship. Several references quickly unfold alluding that everyone seems to know of some unsafe sexual environment for girls or some actual battered wife. Sofia says, All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child aint safe in a family of men. (page 42) She also says, my mamashe under my daddy foot. Anything he say, goes. (43) These threats to girls and women seem to be common knowledge, practically behavioral norms. Celie writes about it to God saying, Harpo ast his daddy why he beat me. Mr.___ say, Cause she my wife. (23) In other words, thats the way it is son. Albert later advises his son, Well how you spect to make her mind? Wives is like children. You have to let em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating. (37)
Celies Dear God is like her beating drum of survival, page after brutal page. Walker invites readers into their own overworked, ineffective, recurring thoughts of Gods significance under such circumstances. I wondered what Gods value would be to Celie in surviving her events. Will this story be about the power of God or about atheism? Walker lets me fish my own mind, preparing me for hers. She is going to make me question the impact my personal view of God has on the behaviors of men against women. This sounds preposterous now, but Walker isnt a Pulitzer Prize winner without reason. Every new transgression is added to the story so readers will take their own spiritual and moral inventories in search of solutions. When we cant find answers to problems we want solved we will be ready to consider Walkers unique perspective.
As Celies beatings continue, a cultural foundation rises beneath it all. When Harpo couldnt make his wife, Sophia, mind, the fact that Celie (a victim herself!) advised him to beat her, affirms the normalcy of wife abuse in Celies culture. She has written to Dear God saying, Bible say, Honor father and mother no matter whatWell, sometime Mr. ___ git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband. I shrug my shoulders. This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways.(43) Celie has also mentioned a time when Mr.___ goes off hunting with white men, all of them having gunsa frightful image to own. When the white men hold Mr.___ accountable for his daughter-in-laws non-subjective behavior, it seems the gender oppression is shared across racial lines. What do southern jazz-era blacks and whites have in common that they would share beliefs about how to handle their women? Its Christianity, which Celie embraces as a good girl.
Walker imports knowledge from the cultural escapee, Nettie, who tells Celie there are colored people (the missionaries) who are not like Pa or Mr.___. But she also begins writing about the way African Olinka women are oppressed and can be abused because their husbands have the power of life and death over them! (Not a far cry from Julias boyfriend shooting her to death, nor from Sophias near death beating from the police.) Olinka girls arent allowed to attend school, while boys are encouraged. Not a far cry from Celie being pulled out of school by her Pa and Nettie having to run away to continue her education. An Olinka womens entire worth is based on her ability to become attached to a man and bear his childrenalong side his other wives. Not a far cry from the way southern black women were respected as child-bearing wives, or preached against like career-woman Shug. By paralleling and mixing up cultural (mis)behaviors from southern blacks and whites to African ancestral tribes, Walker is presenting the fact that sexism and racism are global phenomenon. And everywhere on the planet, people hear the drumbeat of their own Dear God.
Homosexuality is another global fact at odds with world gods. But I dont think the worst gay-basher alive could find fault with Celies overdue experience with love. Walker plants an idea that the brutality of men is what turned Celie to a woman for love. Walker affirms this perspective later when Celie writes, Sofia and Harpo always try to set me up with some man. They know I love Shug but they think womens love just by accident, anybody handy likely to do. (267) But genders taboo over loving relationships may dissipate entirely, if we agree later that God has no gender.
So far we have Dear God, child abuse, wife beatings, Olinka body mutilations, murders, white men lynching black men, white police brutality against a black woman, polygamy, mock-polygamy (Albert, Shug and Celie), white businesses killing Olinka, and homosexualitynone of which we know how to eliminate from the world and all of this woven tightly together by Walker.
Climactically, Walker adds unbearable emotional cruelty to Celie, which threatens to kill her Dear Godher heartbeat through years of malice. Now she blasphemes and accuses God of being just like any other man who never listens to what a woman has to say.
Surprisingly, Shug corrects Celie with Walkers most unique perspective: God is not a white man. Celie admits her vision of God is a white man. Shug says theres not any way to read the Bible and not think God is white. Its the white mans god that doesnt listen to anything colored people say anymore then the white mayor does.
Heres the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or dont know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.
It? I ast.
Yeah, It. God aint a he or a she, but a It.
But what do it look like? I ast.
Dont look like nothing, she say, It aint a picture show. It aint something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. (202)
Shug says its the self-centeredness of white people that slants their Bible interpretations toward a white masculinity of God.
Shug says God loves everything he created, including the good feelings that come from sex. The way to honor God is to pay attention to all of his playful creations. For example, to see the color purple in a field would be something out of the ordinary. God put it there for us to notice, to honor It. Shugs love for Celie is like a new surprise from God, like the color purple in the field. Shug has become so interested in her feelings for Celie that she changes her relationship with Albert, aligning herself with Celies need to be loved, above Alberts. Shug says man has corrupted everything, even to the extent that a vision of a man-God is at the other end of our prayers. Once the man is gone from Celies vision of God, she becomes able to see other things in creation, like corn growing. She wonders how God does that and finally, begins thinking of Gods miracles, rather than thinking of man as a representative vision of God. Even Alberts crimes against her seem less potent now that God seems so amazing.
Walkers concept of God also answers questions of racism. Whites think God is white, therefore, superior. But the Olinka believe white people evolved from the Olinka. black folks have what you call albinos to this day. But you never hear of white folks having nothing black unless some black men been messing with em. (280) But the Olinka killed their white mutants, fearing them because they looked different.
What they did, these Olinka peoples, was throw out they own children, just cause they was a little different Surviving albinos set themselves against the Olinka who rejected them. They was so mad to git throwed out and told they was naked they make up they minds to crush us wherever they find us, same as they would a snake.(281) While white rubber plantation owners are causing Olinka to starve, this story rings true.
The Olinka also predict the next shift in power, from white to colored. they still so mad bout being unwanted, Gon kill off a lot of other folk too who got some color. In fact, they gon kill off so much of the earth and the colored that everybody gon hate them just like they hate us today. Then they will become the new serpent. And wherever a white person is found hell be crush by somebody not white, just like they do us today. Given the current relations between white nations and Korea, Pakistan, China and Moslem nations, again, this story rings true!
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