The color purple

Color Purple

While setting is extremely important in most stories, it is essential to Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Celie's life is extremely tragic, but it is important to the outcome of the story for one to view Celie, not as a victim, but as the protagonist, and, eventually, the hero. In order to view Celie in this manner, it has to be clear that she begins the story without any options as to how to escape from her father and later, Mister. In a time and place where child protective services and women's shelters provide options, it is hard to understand Celie's mindset and her life circumstances. Therefore, it is necessary to be transported to the South during the Jim Crow era.

It is only within the context of this setting, where men where prized above women and blacks had few rights, that one can really understand what a strong person Celie is. When being raped by her father, and believing that he is murdering her babies, Celie does not have the option of turning to the police or speaking with a school counselor. Instead, she lives with the abuse. What is amazing is that, even without a good role model or someone to help her, Celie is clearly a good person. She knows that she is powerless to end her father's abuse, but she acts to keep him from abusing her sister, Nettie.

Setting is also essential later in the story, when Celie leaves Mister. Resigned to living with a man who, although no longer physically abusive, offers her little, Celie only leaves Mister when she discovers that he has been hiding Nettie's letters. Leaving a husband and living single, at that time and in that place, was an amazingly courageous thing to do. Furthermore, the fact that Celie leaves Mister, not in a hateful manner, but matter-of-factly, indicates what a wonderful person she is. Celie is not ruled by hatred, but by love, and is her love for Nettie, not her hatred for Mister, that causes her to end that relationship.

As a huge fan of the book, The Color Purple, I was initially hesitant to see the movie. I had seen some of the more amazing books I love, such as the Prince of Tides, rendered almost incomprehensible by well-meaning directors, and worried that Spielberg had done the same. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to come away from the movie with the same sense of hope and joy that I received when reading the book.

I am not unaware of Walker's complaints that Spielberg editorialized with his direction; placing emphasis on the wrong parts of the story and transforming it into something different than the story written by Walker. I even agree, somewhat, with that characterization. After all, Spielberg, a Jewish man, simply cannot have the same insight into the life of a black woman as Walker, a black woman, can have. It is unsurprising that Spielberg's Celie differs, somewhat, from Walker's Celie. I think the main difference between the book and the movie is that the Celie in the book always looks like a hero, while the Celie in the movie is a little bit more uncertain. However, I believe this was necessary in the movie, because Spielberg simply could not include everything from the book in the movie; he was limited by time. If one begins the movie knowing that Celie has been protecting Nettie from their father, there is not as much room to show than transformative nature of the relationship between Celie and Shug. Therefore, I find that Spielberg's interpretation of The Color Purple made the story more readily accessible to more people than would have initially responded to Walker's book. At the same time, Walker's themes about the redemptive power of love, the bonds between family, the importance of hope, have been carried through to Spielberg's movie. In addition, the way that Spielberg focuses on the physical abuse by Celie's father, Mister, and Harpo, highlights the cyclical nature of abuse in a manner that is somewhat obscured in the novel. In this way, the movie may actually present an improvement over the narrative form, because the visualization of the abuse and its outcomes is more dramatic than when rendered in print.