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| Alice Walker when she wrote the book in 1982. She is 75 years old now! |
Pockets worn and pockets torn - a perfect summary of The Color Purple by Alice Walker when given some background and explanation - which don't worry, I plan to give you. A lot of characters, especially the women, wear different sets of pockets (a metaphor for facades) based on their circumstances. For example, in the pink section of my notes, I made out Sofia to usually be very tough, feisty, outspoken, and sassy. But when faced with real societal and institutional racism, she becomes compliant and weak because she is outnumbered in her fight. Sofia meets her match when the police beat her up and take her to jail because she tells the mayor's wife that "hell no" she won't be her maid. Shug Avery also seems to wear different pockets depending on her circumstances. She is much more reserved and short with Albert (who she still likes) as opposed to her husband - whom she is much more flirty and silly with.
Additionally, there are a lot of pockets of societies or families that are torn apart in the book. One of the most interesting and unusual things that I think Walker is trying to reveal, is that whites aren't always the bullies or the predators of the blacks. Sometimes the victimization of the blacks comes from within their own racial community. In The Color Purple, there is a very broken and distorted family dynamic. Men rape their own daughters and nieces. Married couples have affairs on each other. A father even kills one of his own children had by his daughter! Evidently, the main character Celie starts developing feelings for women because she has never been treated respectfully and/or lovingly by a man. She loses trust in men altogether and turns to women for pleasure. It is in this way that Celie reminded me of Meena Alexander in Fault Lines. They both harbor the burden of a fragmented identity; the only difference is that Meena is fragmented from migrating so much (places), and Celie is fragmented by the people that have hurt her. All the men that have abused Celie have stolen a small part of her identity by making her feel worthless and inferior. With each incident of abuse she started to believe that she was really what people wanted her to be and used her for. For example, Celie tells Sofia that she told her husband Harpo to beat because "[she's] a fool... cause [Sofia] do what she can't" and that's fight back. Her whole life, she has been abused into thinking that she has no power or rights. If there was ever a time she did try to fight back, she quickly learned that she was not in the position of dominance, and she was better off being compliant. Celie believes she is a fool because she has been forced to do many "foolish" things, but she doesn't realize that those things weren't her fault because they were just that - forced. She wasn't given a choice, but she was brainwashed into thinking that she liked those things and they were her choice. The abusers tried to make up her mind for her - and in her case... they succeeded. This results in Celie closing herself off to the world, and as I noted in my notes in the first purple section, causes her to have a lack of feeling. When you are taught or repeatedly made to feel like you are worthless, you stop caring about anything because you think your opinion or presence doesn't matter anyway. Due to her deeply instilled fear from being abused since she was young, as noted in the takeaway section of my notes, Celie is the only female character in the story that doesn't go against or fight the stereotypes imposed upon women in some way.
One last thing worth analyzing is a metaphorical/symbolical message that Walker is slowly developing. We learn early on in the story that Celie's mom is sick, and she dies a page later. Later in the story, we learn that Shug Avery is also sick. Metaphorically, Celie is also sick - sick of her wretched life. There is an aura of longing surrounding her, and as the reader, I get the impression that she has a lot of bottled up feelings just waiting to burst and explode. Between these three characters I noticed a pattern - they don't fight back. They had or have become compliant with the men in their lives and societal stereotypes. In response to that, they were or are not very successful. This led to the questions in my notes "What is the significance of Shug's illness?" (in the bottom right corner), and "Is there a correlation between fighting, success, and illness?" (top of the second page). I think that illness is symbol for weakness or the lack of perseverance, and having all the compliant women become ill is Walker's way of conveying the message that giving up or becoming compliant is wrong or a "sick" thing to do. She obviously believes the opposite must be done in order to gain any success in life. I just think it is no coincidence that Celie's mother was weak in her protests or refusals to sex, and kind of turned a blind eye to her husband's abuse; Shug Avery was sick when she left her husband and came to satisfy Albert, all while her career was dwindling; and Celie is the definition of compliant - constantly giving in to her father's and then later her husband's demands, and they all ended up sick (or even dead in the case of Celie's mom) in one way or another.
