The Color Purple - The Exposition

You better not tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.

Dear God,

I am fourteen years old. I am. I have always been a good girl.

On the first page of the book “The Color Purple”, written by Alice Walker, in 1983, an Afro-American girl named Celie writes a letter to God. She initiates the letter with the sentences above, containing an introduction of herself, to God as well as to the readers of the book.

The letter begins with a sentence that seemed insignificant when I read it for the first time; however, I believe it has a deeper meaning than what is assumed of it. The command hides a scared girl’s thoughts of what could happen if you spread the word about something that, as she has been told, is top-secret.

Furthermore, in the following sentences she portraits herself as a fourteen year old girl, that despite of everything she has been through, always used to be a good person. By replacing “I am” with “I have”, I believe that the girl establishes that the conditions may have changed now and even if she no longer is a good girl, at least she always used to be.

The first three sentences of the book did catch my interest and they made me excited for what the book has to offer, however, they also reveal a negative aspect of the book and that is the way it is written in. Even though I do understand that the book is supposed to be written from the perspective of a young, uneducated girl and therefore is full of misspelled words and sentences, it does not appeal to me since the language and the misspelling makes the book a lot harder to read.

As mentioned before, the narrator and main character of the book is a girl named Celie. She is a poor and uneducated girl that lives with her father and her younger sister Nettie in a community where love and caring among people does not exist. Peoples lives are not valuable nor respected and this is demonstrated when the women in the society give birth to a lot of children that they do not mind to take care of. Additionally, daughters are being seen as an object to earn money on, by selling them to wealthier widowers with several children for the new woman to take care of.

The book is written as a collection of letters, all addressed to God by Celie. She keeps these letters as a diary and in them, she writes about her daily life. However, since Celie gets beaten, molested and raped a lot by her father, she writes a lot about her fears as well. One of her fears may be to end up like her mother who got very ill and died. Even though her father soon remarries, he does not stop abusing his daughter who does not fight him but instead accepts everything that people says or does to her.

Furthermore, Celie often gets compered to her sister who is a lot prettier and brighter than her, but also to other women in the town and to other men’s wives. She is called ugly and fat, however, nobody really knows what her life is like. After giving birth to two children and getting both of them either killed or sold by her father, she soon marries a man called

Mr. ____ and begins to live with him and his children. Soon enough a woman that Mr. ____ is in love with, called Shug Avery, moves in with them as well.

Although love between people does not play a big role in the novel, the heart of Celie knows no boundaries. She loves her sister and in order to save her from their father’s abuse, Celie makes him assault her instead. Furthermore, she loves Shug Avery before even meeting her and she sees her as a perfect role model, being independent and glamorous just as Celie wish she was herself.

In contrast to Celie, Shug Avery is unconventional and self-confident. She is a strong woman and she never let’s any men decide what she should do or where she should be. In this case, the characteristics between the main roles differ significantly. However, on the other hand, none of the main characters seems to live a happy life. This will hopefully change over time in the book’s continuation.

In conclusion, the meaning of the title “The Color Purple” has not been revealed yet so far in the novel, however, when going shopping for new clothes once in the book, Celie finds something purple to wear. This may not really have anything with the title to do, however, either way, the real meaning will probably be discovered later on in the novel.