Title: The Color Purple

Author: Alice Walker

The genre: The Color Purple is a modern novel.

Main character:

Celie:

She is an uneducated, ugly 14 year old black country girl. She is eager to learn but can't, because as the eldest daughter she has to look after the children. She is sexually abused by her stepfather and Mr….. She writes letters to God. As the story develops, she becomes an independent woman.

Characters and relationships:

Nettie:
She is Celie's younger sister. She's educated by Samuel and Corrine, a missionary couple. She looks after Celie's children. Nettie has a particular interest in the fate of black people.

Mr……:
(Albert) is a good-looking widower who wants to marry Nettie, but who marries Celie instead. He is inconsiderate, cruel and contemptuous of women. When he hanges his ways, Celie calls him Albert for the first time.

Shug Avery:
She is a very attractive woman, a kind of a femme fatale. She's a famous blues singer. She's a very independent woman with her own philosophy, based on her experiences in life. Shug is bisexual, but in the end she chooses Celie.

Setting:

Celie lives on a farm near a small town in the south of the U.S.A., an area with a lot of racial discrimination. Nettie spends part of her life in the village of the Olinka in the African jungle.

Time:

The story takes place in the first half of the 20th century.

How the story begins and how the story ends

When Celie starts telling her story she's 14 and at the end she's about 55 and the Second World War has just begun.

Why do you think the author chose this title:

The color purple stands for the independence of someone mind and feeling. When celie gets to buy a dress for the first time she buys a purple dress and she paints her room in that color.

Summary:

Celie, 14, has given birth to two children, after having sex with her stepfather, whose wife doesn't want to have sex with him anymore. The children are taken away from her. Celie can't go to school and remains very poorly educated. She also has a sister called Nettie, who's the only one she really cares for.

Then a certain Mr… wants to marry Nettie, but their father says he can only get married to Celie. Celie looks after Mr….’s children. Nettie comes to live with them, because her stepfather abuses her. But Mr tries to seduce her, she goes back home. Celie is being treated very badly by Mr…. and she writes more and more letters to God.

After a while Shug Avery who is an old friend, comes to visit Mr…... She becomes ill and stays with Mr…and has to be looked after. Once,Shug performs for Celie, singing a song dedicated to her. Shug also teaches Celie to discover her body, which had been abused by men until then. She also makes sure that …. doesn't beat Celie again. She goes back to Memphis and gets married to Grady. She has made a succesful comeback.

One day Celie discovers a box with letters from Nettie. Nettie writes that she lives with Corine and Samuel and that she think their adopted children are Celie's. She writes that she is going with them to Liberia as missionaries. Nettie describes the feelings she had when she first saw Africa. Celie finds out that her father was really her stepfather, who had no right to give her away, so she resists her husband more and more. Shug accompanies Celie when she goes to see her stepfather and her real parents' graves.

Celie inherits a sum of money when her real father dies and starts a little shop. Then Nettie and Samuel, who she has married because Corine died, decide to go to America. Celie and her husband live in the house which her real father left her. She misses Shug who has taught her so much. Finally a car stops in front of the house and Nettie gets out. They are extremely glad to see each otherand from then on, they have a reunion every year on the fourth of July.

Own opinion on the book:

I find this book very interesting and I think that you can learn something from it.