Celie's Emancipation
The Color Purple” by Alice Walker symbolizes today’s woman and finding your own voice. Raised in a broken home, Celie struggles to find her identity while still married to Mr._____ and tending to his needs and his children. Seemingly Celie is lost and only knows abuse and suffering until Sophia and Shug Avery comes along, challenging her. They challenged her mind, causing her to look within at the woman she is and showed her through action how to survive life’s situations and come out stronger. We all need that one circle or person in our lives that will challenge us to change. Growing up, I found Celie to be a woman of virtue and great strength while I was going through in every area of my life. Celie was my first example on how to conquer any obstacle thrown your way. Through making a quilt of various materials, life, laughter and a series of letters that Shug Avery finds, Celie discovers that her sister is still alive and begins to find herself. Celie later moves away to Memphis to start her own pants making business and comes into her own woman. When you know better, and taught how to overcome and keep moving forward, you do better. In this essay I will discuss Celie and her background, the bond she formed with Ms. Sophia and Shug Avery, and how she finally became free through Nettie, her sister.
The novel opens up with Celie as a fourteen year old teenager giving birth to her second child, who was given away like the first one to a young missionary couple named Samuel and Corrine. Later in the novel when Shug Avery asked Celie “How was it with your children daddy?”(Purple. 111), Celie recalls her childhood and how she was first molested by her father. After Celie’s mother discovered hair on her room floor, her father blamed Celie who cut hair at the time. It was really her Pa. Abuse on Celie began when her mother became sick and her stepfather told her “You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t” (Purple, 1). Celie didn’t understand at the time and became accustomed to being beaten and held responsible for the lack of intimacy her mother displayed towards the father. This was also displaced anger and because Celie was there and vulnerable and couldn’t fight back at the time. Her Pa took advantage of her and did not care that Celie fiercely bled while forced to continue cutting his hair after the fact. When Celie became pregnant, her mother knew, but Celie was oblivious, but always described her pregnancy as being sick, but having to still work around the house and do what was expected of her. This was the time for Celie to grow up, but she never has the opportunity to blossom into her own nor to see what her strengths and weaknesses were. Unfortunately, many young girls have this same life, where they have to grow up to fast because of their home circumstances such as having to watch their siblings while their parents work, be a second caregiver because the father is absent, mother is on drugs, or live through sexual abuse by a close relative. It took years for Celie to recognize and break the cycle of abuse and end her marriage to Mr._____. Celie begins to write letters to God which became “her simultaneous impulse to understand her traumatic experience of rape and to gain authority over her life” (Fiske, 115).
-Tiffanys
The novel opens up with Celie as a fourteen year old teenager giving birth to her second child, who was given away like the first one to a young missionary couple named Samuel and Corrine. Later in the novel when Shug Avery asked Celie “How was it with your children daddy?”(Purple. 111), Celie recalls her childhood and how she was first molested by her father. After Celie’s mother discovered hair on her room floor, her father blamed Celie who cut hair at the time. It was really her Pa. Abuse on Celie began when her mother became sick and her stepfather told her “You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t” (Purple, 1). Celie didn’t understand at the time and became accustomed to being beaten and held responsible for the lack of intimacy her mother displayed towards the father. This was also displaced anger and because Celie was there and vulnerable and couldn’t fight back at the time. Her Pa took advantage of her and did not care that Celie fiercely bled while forced to continue cutting his hair after the fact. When Celie became pregnant, her mother knew, but Celie was oblivious, but always described her pregnancy as being sick, but having to still work around the house and do what was expected of her. This was the time for Celie to grow up, but she never has the opportunity to blossom into her own nor to see what her strengths and weaknesses were. Unfortunately, many young girls have this same life, where they have to grow up to fast because of their home circumstances such as having to watch their siblings while their parents work, be a second caregiver because the father is absent, mother is on drugs, or live through sexual abuse by a close relative. It took years for Celie to recognize and break the cycle of abuse and end her marriage to Mr._____. Celie begins to write letters to God which became “her simultaneous impulse to understand her traumatic experience of rape and to gain authority over her life” (Fiske, 115).
-Tiffanys
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