Ms Celie's Journey

My friends and I often joke that you are not considered black until you have seen “The Color Purple.” As a child I remember falling asleep on the movie because t was so long. I did not begin to fully understand the movie until middle school when I picked up the book and began to read it. It was when I actually read the words that I began to piece together the main character Celie’s life. After reading the book, every time I watched the movie I began to fully understand her journey and struggle with literacy.

Celie is the main character in Alice Walker’s novel turned movie, The Color Purple. The Color Purple
described what it meant to be in the early part of 20^th century in the rural American south. At a young age Celie is raped by her stepfather, bares him two children and is given away in an arranged marriage to a man with children. All through Celie’s life she is made to feel as though she is nothing. From a young age she was constantly told that she was ugly and dumb so she grew up to believe that. She was always comparing herself to other women and downgrading her appearance. With the help of her husbands mistress and her estranged sister Nettie, Celie becomes literate and breaks free from her chains of oppression.

In the essay “Women and Literacy in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple,” the author E. Yvette Walters describes the five major literary categories that women find themselves and how Celie goes through each category to become an active literate woman. The first category is silence. It is when a woman hears everything around her, but does think of herself as being capable to understand it. The next stage is received knowledge and that is when a woman can comprehend what is being said , but will not speak out of fear of sounding dumb or stupid. The third category is when a woman starts becoming aware of who she is and what she wants to become. The fourth category is understanding what is right is not always right and relying on you and those around you to find out what is right. The final category is separation of their thoughts from her thoughts so that she has her opinions about life, which is essentially what a literate person is. I enjoyed reading this article because I was able to look at one of my favorite movies and understand the main character better.