Criticism and Reflection of the Color Purple by Alice Walker
Criticism and Reflection of the Color Purple by Alice Walker Criticized as a novel containing graphic violence, sexuality, sexism, and racism, The Color Purple was banned in several schools across the United States. Crude language and explicit detail chronicle the life of Celie, a young black woman subjected to society’s cruelties. Although immoral, the events and issues discussed in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple are prominent in today’s society, and must be public and conversed rather than unknown and silenced.
If each person is given the right to raise her voice, express herself, and tell her tale, who holds the authority to brand a book unfit for society? Literature encompasses the details of life thus, enabling the reader to understand and view other’s lives and the society, provided that she is allowed to actually read the work. The Color Purple by Alice Walker, epitomizes African American society, female freedom, and female friendship through brutal scenes told by Celie, a young African American woman. Accurately capturing the limits of black women within the social structure, The Color Purple should not be banned.
Born into an underprivileged family of African American farmers in the early twentieth century, Celie’s story parallels the post Civil War era of the United States; educating the reader of the African American’s low place in society. Although African Americans were free from slavery, they were controlled by prejudice and the Jim Crow Laws, a series of social limitations restricting African American’s social mobility. Separated from Caucasian’s, when in public the characters were forced to stay in “places for blacks” (Walker 32). Treating African Americans not only as unequal, but as animals, the story depicts the Mayor’s wife assessing the African American children she met by “digging in her pocket book…She stop, put her hand on one of the children head. Say, and such strong white teef… All your children so clean, she
If each person is given the right to raise her voice, express herself, and tell her tale, who holds the authority to brand a book unfit for society? Literature encompasses the details of life thus, enabling the reader to understand and view other’s lives and the society, provided that she is allowed to actually read the work. The Color Purple by Alice Walker, epitomizes African American society, female freedom, and female friendship through brutal scenes told by Celie, a young African American woman. Accurately capturing the limits of black women within the social structure, The Color Purple should not be banned.
Born into an underprivileged family of African American farmers in the early twentieth century, Celie’s story parallels the post Civil War era of the United States; educating the reader of the African American’s low place in society. Although African Americans were free from slavery, they were controlled by prejudice and the Jim Crow Laws, a series of social limitations restricting African American’s social mobility. Separated from Caucasian’s, when in public the characters were forced to stay in “places for blacks” (Walker 32). Treating African Americans not only as unequal, but as animals, the story depicts the Mayor’s wife assessing the African American children she met by “digging in her pocket book…She stop, put her hand on one of the children head. Say, and such strong white teef… All your children so clean, she
Bibliography: Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. California: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. 1982.