The book starts on a farm down in the south of America at the beginning of the 20th century. Celie, 14-year old girl lives there with who she thinks is her father and her sister Nettie. She and her sister care a lot about each other. Celie (the eldest of the two sisters) has several times been raped by her father and she has two children from him. Both of the children are taken away from her and she thinks her father killed them. Celie is not allowed to go to school, that’s why she is very low educated. In the church there’s a man who always looks at Nettie, his name is Mr.. He asks for Nettie’s hand. Father refuses it, but promises him a cow if he marries Celie. Mr. accepts the offer and marries Celie. He doesn’t love Celie, but his wife died and he wants a woman to clean the house for him and look after his four children. He hit her. One day Celie and Mr. are in town. When they walk into a shop Celie sees a little girl who looks just like her daughter. She begins to speak with the mother who is married to the reverend. Nettie runs away from home and comes to Celie. She stay’s with Celie and her family. But Celie’s husband tries to seduce her, so Nettie leaves, promising that she will write till her dead. Celie never receives a letter from her sister and she doesn’t know if Nettie is alive or not. She goes on writing her lonely letters to God. Harpo, Mr.’s son, decides he wants to marry a girl named Sofia. (At that time she’s pregnant of him) His father forbid him to get married, but he does it anyhow and they are going to live on the land near Celie’s house. Sofia is a strong, confident woman. Mr. is always talking and fantasising about a woman called Shug Avery. He loves her very much. Shug also means a lot to Celie, although she only knows her from a picture, she becomes an obsession for her. A little later Shug comes to visit Mr. Celie is very excited that she will meet her, but when Shug arrives she is horrible because she is drunk. After a while Shug becomes very ill and Celie has to take care of her. This is a very important part, because during this period Celie and Shug become good friends. When Shug is in the house, Mr. doesn’t beat or abuse Celie, Shug forbids him to do that. Even when she leaves he obeys her. Shug and Celie really love each other, although they’re both married. Celie learns a lot of Shug and gets more confidence. In the time that Celie and Shug become friends, Sophia leaves Harpo and moves in with her sister Odessa. After Sofia has left, Harpo opens jukejoint (a pub). Shug is a good blues singer and is going to sing in the jukejoint. Without Shug there wouldn’t be so many people in there. Harpo also finds a new girlfriend, Squeak. She is very different from Sofia. After a while Shug goes away, Celie wants to say that she wants to come with her but she can’t. (In that time Sophia has beaten the mayor (who is a white man) and she has to go to prison. She has to be there 12 years. Because she is very ill, no one believes that she will survive. Squeak is a relative of the warden, so she goes to speak with him. She gets Sofia out of prison and instead of being in prison she has to serve a white woman, the mayor’s wife. She is never allowed to see her children.) Shug always writes letters to Mr. One day she says that she is coming back. When she comes back she is married to a man, Grady. Mr. and Grady are drunk all the time. In that time Celie tells Shug about her family, that her mother has died and that her sister has ran away. She says to Shug that almost nobody ever loved her. After a while Shug discovers that Mr. has been hiding all the letters from Nettie to Celie. Celie starts reading the letters and reads about Nettie’s life. Nettie lives with a woman (Corrine) her husband ( Samuel a reverend) and their two children, Olivia and Adam. These two children turn out to be Celie’s children. Nettie travels with the family to Africa where she goes to do missionary work. They live in a village in Africa and run a school for the Olinka. (a tribal) When Celie reads her father isn’t her real father she decides to go back with Shug to Shug’s house in Memphis. In Memphis Celie starts to make pants for a hobby and finally she starts running a shop in pants. During this time Harpo and Sofia fall in love again. Shug also falls in love, with a 19-year-old boy and goes with him, promising Celie that she will return. Celie does not believe her, but decides to live her own life. She is going to live in her old house, because her stepfather died. The house used to belong to her ‘real father’ and he left it to his children. Sofia is coming to live with Celie, she doesn’t have to work any longer for the mayor’s wife. Mr. realises that he has treated Celie very wrong and he and Celie become friends. Finally Shug returns to Celie and Mr. One day Nettie, Samuel, Olivia, Adam (and his wife) return. Celie is totally surprised and she is very happy to see them. The last letter of the book is a letter to god, but with Celie’s new look at the world. “Dear god. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear everything. Dear god. ”In this letter she thanks god for bringing Nettie back to her. At the end of the book Celie is full of confidence and love for life, others and herself. Writer: Alice Walker wrote the Colour Purple. Alice Walker was born in Eaten, Georgia in 1944. She was de youngest of 8 children. Because she was black and pour, she knows how it was to be discriminated. Thanks to her mother she has been giving the opportunity to go to the university so she has taken that opportunity. Nowadays she lives in San Francisco. In 1982 she wrote The colour purple. The Colour Purple is published in the Nederlands by publisher Wolters-Noordhof in Groningen out the backbirds series. Other works of Alice are: The third life of grange Copland (1970), Meridian (1976) Met the Colour Purple has Alice won a Pulitzer. Steven Spielberg reproduces the story in a movie. De film has been made in 1985 and has won several awards. De characters in the movie are played by: Albert= Danny Glover

Celia/ Celie=Whoopi Goldberg
Shug=Margaret Avery
Sofia=Oprah Winfrey
Harpo=Willard Pugh
Nettie=Akosua Busia
After I read the book I have seen the movie. I personally liked the book more because you actually get a better picture of how Celie lives en how she feels and how she lives throe things. They also let parts of the book out of the movie. For example that Mr. and Celie sort of build a ‘friendship’ at the end of the book. In the movie they only show that he gets a sort of rear moment where he pays the immigration of Nettie and when Nettie arrives he’s looking over Nettie en Celie up on a hill. Time: The story happens in the beginning of the 20th century and it is about a girl that in the beginning of the book 14 years old. She’s growing up. Marries a man and leaves him to. I think that about 20 years go by. My opinion: I found it a very good as well as beautiful book. Alice walkers’ meaning was to make an image of the black society in the beginning of the 20th century. I think she really succeed in picturing an image of the black people round that time, you get a good picture of who stands where in the community and how ‘normal’ it was that girl with the age of 14 marry ’s under pressure of there parents. Also that it is a part of the day that women get hit our being abused in an other kind of way. The book tells a beautiful story about the live of Celie (and her friends), you start to understand how she thinks and what she feels and how she looks at thinks but most of all her live. In the letters that she writes to God in the book, toy can see that see is very low educated or it’s an accent that people have in her community that wasn’t clear to me (Blz.5) Dear God, He act like he can’t stand me no more. Say I’m evil an always up to no good. He took my other little baby, a boy this time. But I don’t think he kilt it. I think he sold it to a man an his wife over Monticello. I got breasts full of milk running down myself. He say Why don’t you look decent? Put on something. But what I’m sposed to put on? I don’t have nothing. I keep hoping he fine somebody to marry. I see him looking at my little sister. She scared. But I say I’ll take care of you. With God help. This is a letter that Celie wrote to God in the book. This letter gives a good image of how lonely Celie is and how much she hates and can’t understand her stepfather and it also show’s how much she love’s her sister. In this letter ‘He’ is her stepfather. I put this letter in my report because it supports my opinion. This letter has got me thinking about the live that Celie is living. The father where she talks about in this letter has raped her and he took the two children who came out of the rapes from Celie. He tells her that she has to look decent while her breast who are full of milk spill on her. She also tells about the way her stepfather is looking at her little sister. She knows what he want’s from her because she’s been there and she tells she will help her sister with god’s help. I have chosen this book because it was on the list of the “to read book’s for examine” of my sister. Most of the time books on this list a very good so you don’t want to put them away when you’re only on the 1st page. This book really keeps hanging in your head when you’re finished. Moral: The moral is actually that you shut never ever let anyone walk over you. Celie let this happen, first by her stepfather who raped her and who sold the children who came out of the abuse agents her will. Later she made the same mistake again when her father told her to marry a man she did not know or love en did nothing against it. She just let the abuse of herself go on. Sofia is a woman who did not let anyone walk over her. She proves it when she hit’s the mayor back when he hi her for assaulting his wife. After this event she has to go to jail but she stands for something. Mr. (Albert) also let someone walk al over him. In this case it’s his father. So his father is actually to blame for everything because he made Mr. what he is today in the book with his education. Mr. makes the same mistake by resing his sun just the way he was raised