Boekverslag : Alice Walker - The Color Purple
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 1999 woorden.
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 1999 woorden.
THE COLOR PURPLE
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The author: Alice Walker
Title: The Color Purple
Publisher: The Women's Press, London
Edition: 19th
First published in: 1982
Number of pages: 245
Device: To the Spirit:
Without whose assistance
Neither this book
Nor I
Would have been
Written
2) The Color Purple is a historical/psychological novel.
30 A short summary:
The Color Purple discribes the life of Celie, in a series of letters, most of which are addressed to God and later on in the novel to her sister Nettie.
Through her letters to God you get to know Celie, her family, and the way she has to struggle to stay alive, and time after time has to overcome horrifying situations. At the begining of the novel Celie is 14 years old and living with her mother, her sister (Nettie), and what she thinks is her father, but later turns out to be her step-father. (Her real father was lynched by white men.) Celie's mother is very ill. Since the birth of her two children she refuses to sleep with her husband. Her husband, who Celie only refers to as daddy, Pa or he, takes his sexual frustrations out on Celie. He rapes her a number of times, and by the time Celie is 14 years old she's pregnant for the second time. He tells her that if she speaks about it to anyone it will mean her mother's death. Both of her childern get taken away from her, just days after they were born, by 'her' father. She believes he killed her first child, a girl, but she doesn't think he killed her little boy. The fist time she was pregnant 'her father' took her out of school, saying she wasn't clever enough anyway and that her sister was the one that needed to go to school, as she was far more intelligent. The second time she got pregnant her mother cursed her. She asked her who the father was, and who had taken the baby. Celie answers that it was God.
After her mother dies, her father remarries a girl, even younger than Celie, whose name isn't mentioned. Though he's got a new wife, it doesn't stop him from looking at Nettie. Celie fears for her safety, and when Mr.- asks her father if he can marry Nettie, she encourages Nettie to do so. Mr.- was once a married man , but his wife was misteriously killed. Now he's left with four chlidren, two boys, and two girls, he needs someone to care for them, clean the house and help in the fields. Celie's 'father' refuses to let Mr.- marry Nettie, and offers him Celie, saying she's ugly but a hard worker and good with children . He also adds, that she lies and that he will give him an extra cow if he decides to marry her. This all happens in Celie's presence. After a whole spring of thinking Mr.- agrees to marry Celie, clearly letting her know that she isn't the wife of his choice and that she's ugly. Mr.-'s childern don't accept their new mother, and they try to make Celie's life as hard as possible. Shorly after Celie and Mr.- get married, Nettie runs away from home, and comes to stay with Celie. But it doen't take long before Mr.- tells her to clear out. Feeling hartbroken the two girls write to each other. (quote pp. 18 ; I say, Write. She say, What? I say, Write. She say, Nothing but death can keep me from it. end quote). Because Celie doesn't recieve any letters she believes that the one person she ever really loved, and gave her love to is now dead. She now has to face the world alone and endure the daily physical and sexual abuses of Mr.-. She expresses her feelings of grief and hopelesness in her letters to God. On top of all.this the eldest son of Mr.-, Harpo, gets married to Sofia. Having seen the way his father treats Celie, and seeing how she never speaks back to his father and always does as she is told, he wants to have the same obiedience from his wife Sofia. But Sofia lies down for no one. When Harpo tries to give Sofia a beating, as Celie had advised him, she fights back. Harpo ends up being a lot more bashed up then Sofia. When Sofia finds out Celie told Harpo to beat her she gets really angry. But as she is talking with Celie, her anger soon fades away. She sees that Celie only did it because she was jealous of her. jealous of the fact that she stood up for herself and that Celie had the feeling that she couldn't. They became quite good friends.
When Shug Avery enters the story things begin to change. Shug, is a well known blues-singer, who has had a great number of affairs and is therefore considered by the people to be a sinner. She has been the woman Mr.- has 'really loved' for years and years. And when he hears she is suffering from tbc, and no one will take her in he does. Celie has had a picture of Shug that she treasures. She longed for the day that she would get a chance to meet her. Although deepdown Shug scares her, Celie is deeply touched by Shug's warmth. Shug protects her from Mr.-. Shug brings Celie the support that she has so long longed for. They only thing that spites Celie about her is Shug's unfaithfulness. As soon as she is back to health she departs and leaves for Memphis. When she returns, not long after, she appears to have married one of the men in the band, Grandy, not that this means that this stops her from seeing other men and women. During one of her stays, Shug and Celie find piles of letters, addressed to Celie, there from Nettie. The letters describe how, after Nettie was sent away she found a job as a babysitter for the black family of missionary Samuel. She has to look after their two adopted children, that later turn out to be Celie's children. The family she works for moves to Africa, and Nettie is allowed to come along. She teaches the children of the the local village there. In her letters she describes the missionary work done by Samuel and his wife. She also writes a great deal about the history of Africa and the role of the colonisation. Nettie has lived in Liberia for 25 years. After having read all her sisters letters, Celie no longer addresses her letters to God, but to her sister. She, in a way feels cheated by God, for keeping her small just like a man, but Shug keeps telling her otherwise. ( quote Shug pp.166/167; God is inside you and inside of everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifests itself even if you not looking, or you don't know what you looking for. Trouble for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit. It? I ask. Yeah, it. God ain't a he or a she, but a It. But what do it look like? I ask.
Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else including yourself. I believe God is everything, Say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. and when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It. end quote.) Slowly Celie begins to distance herself from Mr.-, and after Shug's advice starts wearing trousers. Not long after this she discovers that who she had thought to be her father for all these years wasn't her real father. She moves out and together with Shug she goes to Memphis and start a tailors for unisex-trousers. After Celie has left him Mr- starts to think about the way he has lived his life up until now and understands that he was wrong. Her learns to respect and truly love Celie and asks her to give him a second chance. Celie and Mr.- go and live in the house that Celie was born in, the house that turned out had been left to her by her real father. At they end of the story after 25 years Celie, is reunited with her sister and her two children.
4) How is the book constructed?
The book consists of letters mostly from Celie addressed to God, and later on to Nettie. The other letters are written by Nettie and addressed to Celie. You could also divide the book into two parts. Distinguishing the part before Celie has found Nettie's letters and after. I found the 'first part' the most rewarding to read. The second part wasn't that delicately constructed and involved alot of talk about the history of Africa and the influence of the colonisation and the missionary work in Africa.
5) Things that were striking about the book?
The story takes place in the first half of th 20th century. A black girl writes letters, thus telling the story, in an odd spelling and grammar. But the most striking thing is that Celie hasn't learnt to read and write well enough at school to be able to do this.
6) Some thing Celie has in common with the characters around her?
Just as she, all the other characters are looking for love and happiness.
7) The theme of the book?
I think the theme of this book has got to do with discrimination. Not only discrimination between white and black, but also between rich and poor, faithful and unfaithful, between men and women. Women's rights play a big role throughout the novel.
8) I thought it was a beautiful book. The way in which Celie told her story, with the spelling and grammar, also showed her vunerableness. She had a lot of things happen to her that she could not do anything about or could controle. The only thing she could do was keep on moving forwards, finding condolance and a listening ear in God. I think Celie, Nettie, Sofia and Shug all were heroes in their own way.
9) Biography: Alice Walker:
Alice Walker was born on 9 Febuary 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of eigth children in a family of poor black sharecroppers. At the age of eight she was accidentally shot by an elder brother end blinded in one eye. She retreated into solitude, read stories, kept a notebook. In 1960 her life was transformed by Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Movement. In her own words she was 'born again'and 'began to be alive'. Aided by her mother who worked as a maid in a white home, she attended a black college in Atlanta and Sarah Lawrence, the progressive Women's collage in New York. In her senior year she became pregnant and in a state of desperation considered suicide.
Following a traumatic abortion she began to write the poems collected in Once (1986). After receiving a B.A. degree in 1965 walker traveld to Kenya and Uganda then settled in Mississippi and taught black studies at Jackson State College. With her husband, a white attorney, she participated in the struggle to end segregation.
The marriage ended in divorce in 1976. Walker has reveived Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her first collection of short stories In love and trouble: Stories of black Women (1973) won the Rosenthal Award in 1974. The Color Purple (1982) her third novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. The Dutch writer Menno Meyjes wrote the screenplay for Hollywood version of The Color Purple. Steven Spielberg directed and Walker served as a consultant. A consulting edition to the feminist monthly Ms and the black political quarterly Freedomways she makes her home in San Francisco, California.
Home - Contact - Over - ZoekBoekverslag op uw site - Onze Boekverslagen - Boekverslag toevoegen