in the movie " the color purple", could you tell me...?

Question

if there is any relation between the opression against women and the history of the us.. erm.. im a foreign student..so.. im not familiar with the history to us.. the time period in the movie,did it have any connectio whatsoever? what other issues are raised in this movie? any personal views?

Answer 1

The Color Purple reveals the harsh emotional, social, and economic difficulties facing blacks (especially women) in the rural South during the first half of the twentieth century. Just as important, it traces how these difficulties can be at least partly resolved by hard work, faith (in oneself, if not in God), and education. As these remarks suggest, the novel veers dangerously close to the platitudes which marred Walker's earlier writings, but the incisiveness with which she presents her material tends to rescue it from sentimentality.



Particularly striking is her uncompromising treatment of black males early in the novel. Both Celie's stepfather Alphonso (usually called simply "he") and her husband Albert ("Mr.") are vicious, amoral men who regard their wives and daughters as ignorant live-in maids and sex objects. As Walker points out, though, their mistreatment of women reflects black men's sense of impotence in a white-dominated society and, concomitantly, the inheritance of social practices: Albert's son Harpo tries to beat his wife Sofia because that is how Albert treated his own wives. More than this, as the series of letters from Celie's sister Nettie, an African missionary, reveal, the systematic mistreatment of women is common among the Olinka tribe: Abuse is in part an African phenomenon unrelated to white oppression in America. On the topic of violence, then, The Color Purple is an illuminating document which approaches this social concern from a variety of angles.



Closely aligned with this is Walker's probing of the dynamics of sexual behavior. The Color Purple opens with fourteen-year-old Celie being raped by her "Pa," and Walker's rendering of how fornication appears to an ill-informed little girl is unforgettable. Equally powerful is the callousness with which Pa takes Celie's two babies away from her, and then arranges to have her married to a neighbor his own age (a cow is included to sweeten the deal: after all, Celie "ain't fresh … She spoiled. Twice.") It will be 200 pages before Celie learns that "Pa" is not her biological father, but nonetheless the apparent incest which opens The Color Purple sets the aura of sexual laxity which permeates the novel. In light of this, it is surprising that Celie's lesbian relationship with her husband's lover, Shug Avery, is quite touching. Primarily because Celie herself seems so innocent about sexual matters (Shug repeatedly calls her a virgin) and so in need of the acceptance which Shug amply provides, the lesbian relationship is one of the few examples of genuine love in the novel. Indeed, the lack of love in society—and the importance of accepting it, in whatever form it appears—are twin concerns to which Walker returns time and again.



Likewise, Walker is deeply concerned with the status of religion in modern American society. Approximately half the novel consists of Celie's confiding letters to God, whom she envisions as "some stout white man work at the bank." But when she finds out the truth about her family—that her biological father was lynched, that her mother was insane, that "Pa not pa"—her conclusion is that God is not omnipotent: "You must be sleep." From that point on, her letters are addressed to her sister Nettie, with whom she maintains a correspondence for thirty years despite the fact that neither knows if the other is alive. Sisterly love, rather than organized religion, can be one's "faith," the element which enables one to overcome the worst circumstances and to endure. But as Shug points out, even sisters are not necessary for faith: "God is inside you and inside everybody else," and to find God all one need do is "lay back and just admire stuff. Be happy. Have a good time." Walker herself identifies this attitude as "animism," a legacy of the African past; students of Transcendentalism will recognize it as the Emersonian "Oversoul"; but whatever one labels it, Walker does recognize the need for some sort of faith in modern society.



Interestingly, one social concern which Walker does not probe in The Color Purple is black/white relations. Except for brief glimpses of a redneck prison warden and a rather dubious lady missionary, there are no whites in this novel. Their omission suggests the insularity of rural black life

Answer 2

What you saw in that movie was exactly how it was for women back then. The black people were not truely able to do "as they pleased" until late 1960's. This is very much a true part of the United States. Welcome. Thank you.

Answer 3

the movie is based only on the oppression of blacks in south africa. when a white south african comes to the usa and stay with a black family. both sides have to learn to deal with themselfs