The Color Purple's Celie

The Color Purple’s main protagonist Celie is a young black woman living in the Southern United States. Celies letters in The Color Purple spans about 40 years. Although the letters are not dated it is thought they begin in the late 1920s or early 1930s. During these 40 years Celie is the victim and survivor of racial hatred and harrowing incestuous abuse from her father. Celie’s children are stolen away from her and she put into a marriage where the psychological abuse does more harm to her than the physical abuse.

With no self esteem or parental role models, Celie finds solace in a singer called Shug Avery, whom I believe is instrumental in Celie’s development as a woman and her search for an identity in an unforgiving world that grinds her down at every given opportunity.

When reading this excruciatingly sad tale, identity or lack of identity stands out from page one. The only introduction we get to Celie is that she 14 year old, innocent girl who has had the grave misfortune of being born into a black family of the early 1900s.

Celie’s family itself has no identity. Being black in the United States of America meant that you were not part of the predominately white social structure.Outcasts of a society of whose white government were doing everything possible so that these families were not able to obtain an identity. It’s possible that because of this black identity crisis that Celie’s father, referred to as Pa, Fonso or Alphonso has a problem with realising his own identity as a father to her.

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Seeing Celie as only a sexual instrument at the tender age of 14, the rape of Celie by her father left her with no one to turn to but God. Asking God for a ‘’sign to let me know what is happening to me’’ (Walker, 1992, p3). I believe the rape itself left Celie with a damaging but not misplaced mistrust of men. Throughout the novel in Celie’s letters she refuses acknowledge the names of most of male characters, not giv…

The Color Purple Shug