The Color Purple

Article written by Onyekachi Osuji

B.A. in Public Administration and certified in Creative Writing (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

The novel centers on Celie, a fourteen-year-old African-American girl who is constantly raped by her father but has no one to help her or to confide in and so resorts to writing letters to God as her only outlet. She is later married off to an older widower who continues to rape and abuse her. The abuse and travails Celie suffers render her numb to life but she eventually begins to heal and triumph over her adversities through support from a strong woman named Shug Avery and the loving words of her sister Nettie who shows her different places in the world through her letters.

Key Facts about The Color Purple

• Title: ‘The Color Purple‘
• Author: Alice Walker
• Publication Year: 1982
• Genre: Epistolary Novel; African-American Literature
• Setting: Early 20th century Georgia and Memphis in the USA; and a fictional village in Africa called Olinka.
• Climax: Celie’s enraged outbursts at Mister at dinner
• Protagonist: Celie
• Antagonists: Mister and Alphonso

Alice Walker and The Color Purple

Alice Walker is a versatile writer who has written and published many collections of poems, memoirs, essays, short stories, and novels. The Color Purple is Alice Walker’s best-known work. It is the third novel written by Alice Walker and it won her a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 and a National Book Award for Fiction also in 1983.

According to Walker, The Color Purple is a manifestation of her desire to bring to the human consciousness the evils of division across gender and racial lines and hopefully liberate humans from these evils.

Although not a true-life story, Alice Walker in The Color Purple reflects some true-life struggles, some of which she experienced directly, and others that she heard were experienced by others. For instance, the character Anna Julia that was murdered by an obsessed lover was inspired by the story of Alice Walker’s grandmother, who was murdered by a man that wanted to be her lover. The character Sofia who gets blinded in one eye, is reminiscent of Alice Walker herself, who is blind in one eye. The character Nettie’s experiences in Africa were inspired by Alice Walker’s time as an exchange student in Africa. In all, Alice Walker makes a wonderful blend of fiction and reality, which makes The Color Purple a captivating and relatable story.

Alice Walker has used the publication of The Color Purple to reinforce her stance on some global political issues. For instance, she declined the translation of The Color Purple into Hebrew as a way to show her lack of support for Israel, a country she claims practices apartheid.

Alice Walker continues to foster the legacy of The Color Purple through her other writings. For instance, one of her subsequent novels, published in 1992 with the title Possessing the Secret of Joy, features characters from The Color Purple like Tashi and Adam.

Related Books to The Color Purple

There are some other books written by renowned black female writers that are similar to The Color Purple in showing the struggles of colored women and in addressing the themes of violence, injustice, violation, and abuse of women and the girl child in society. Let’s take a look at some of these works.

• Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker. Alice Walker made Tashi, a minor character in The Color Purple, the protagonist of this novel, published in 1992. Tashi is an African girl from a village called Olinka who moves to America after going through the cultural rites of facial scarification and female circumcision as a young woman. She is married to Adam (also a character from The Color Purple) but their marriage and relationship is tried by the psychological problems Tashi has as a result of the trauma from going through those torturous cultural rites. Along with having related characters and the same author, Possessing the Secret of Joy and The Color Purple are similar in showing the evils of girl child abuse and how culture and societal gender constructs affect individuals.
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. This novel was written by Zora Neale Hurston, whom Alice Walker calls a genius and credits as one of her literary influences. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel that follows the character Janie Crawford, an African-American woman in her forties, as she recounts her life’s journey. Coming from a line of women who have suffered rape for generations, Janie is forced into marriage by her grandmother called, Nanny. She faces several loveless marriages and abuse from men and goes to trial for murder but eventually emerges a stronger and better woman. Rape and violence against women are things both The Color Purple and Their Eyes Were Watching God have in common, along with racial dynamics and gender solidarity.
• The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison. A debut novel from a notable African-American female writer Toni Morrison, published in 1970.  The Bluest Eyes tells the story of a young African-American girl named Pecola who is constantly derided as ”ugly” for having dark skin and so she begins to desire to have blue eyes, which she equates with ”whiteness” and beauty. Pecola’s father rapes her and flees, leaving her pregnant. Pecola gives birth prematurely, and the baby dies. This makes her decline into insanity, where she imagines she has been granted her wish to have blue eyes and that people’s changed behavior towards her is as a result of her newly acquired blue eyes and not as a result of pity and sympathy they feel towards her. Like The Color Purple, The Bluest Eyes exposes rape, incest, domestic violence, and a flawed beauty standard that regards dark skin as ugly.
• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Beyond having the word ”purple” in their titles, The Color Purple and Purple Hibiscus are similar in exploring the themes of domestic violence, gender subjugation, religion, and identity. Like The Color Purple, Purple Hibiscus narrates events from the perspective of a subdued teenage girl. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a world-renowned Nigerian writer, in Purple Hibiscus tells of Kambili, a fifteen-year-old girl from a wealthy and devoutly Catholic Nigerian family whose father Eugene physically and emotionally abuses her, her mother Beatrice, and her brother Jaja. Their mother eventually poisons their father to death, and her brother Jaja takes the blame for it and goes to prison while her mother’s mental health declines. The sibling love and camaraderie between Kambili and Jaja in Purple Hibiscus is similar to that of Celie and Nettie in The Color Purple. And Kambili’s gradual discovery of self and voice through the liberal and loving family of Aunty Ifeoma is similar to the liberation Celie and Nettie find through support and encouragement from Shug Avery and Rev Samuel Jackson’s family, respectively.

The Lasting Impact of The Color Purple by Alice Walker