Banned Books: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
After the death of their Ma, sisters Celie and Nettie find
strength and love in each other. The daughter and son Celie had by Pa are gone.
Dead for all Celie knows. But there are still young children in the home that
need to be raised and that responsibility landed on Celie. Until Pa found a new
wife that is. Once the caretaker responsibilities were taken over Celie was married off.
Nettie ran away from her Pa and her new stepma shortly thereafter, to Celie’s
home with her new husband. After Nettie rejected Mr, Celie's new husband's, advances she had to
leave, not knowing when she would ever see Celie again. With the only person
she truly loved gone, Celie felt weak. The abuse she suffered under Mr and his
children made her weaker still. Raising someone else’s children when unsure of
the life her own pained her. She turned to prayer throughout, trying to affirm
her belief that a higher being cared about her and her Nettie.
The Color Purple looks at the lives of
two sisters whose paths diverge at a young age. Celie, the oldest, is entered
into a loveless marriage where she is treated more like a maid than a wife. She
is forced to raise her husband’s ungrateful children and bed him whenever he
pleases. She was sexually abused by her father at a young age and bore him two
children. She is unaware of the safety of those two children and their missing
presence in her life weighs on her greatly. Nettie’s life is a mystery to Celie for many years as well. All communication between Celie and Nettie had been
severed because of Mr’s interference. The loneliness Celie feels at times is
all encompassing. It’s the journey of these sisters, the strength they have to
muster, and the unceasing love they have for each other that made this novel emotional and captivating.
Walker
created a cast of well developed, emotionally complex, and damaged characters and
created a story that was heart wrenching, painful and worthy of standing the test
of time. I became invested in this story and the characters from the very
beginning. It is hard to imagine the pain that these characters experienced and
the lives they were forced to live. Reading the correspondences that Celie
would write, which was her last bit of hope, were painful. No one should have
to experience the heartache, confusion, abuse and mistreatment the characters
suffered but it was evident with every turn of the page. Celie’s spirituality
and its evolution as she aged was interesting. She evolved into another person
and her faith and spiritual belief reflected that. It was intriguing to watch
the new ideals take shape.
Some of
the many themes Walker explored throughout The
Color Purple were sexuality, abuse, incest, and racism. All of these themes
have also been the reasons why The Color
Purple has been banned from schools around the country. The American
Library Association list many occasions when this novel has been banned with
the most recent being in Morgantown, North Carolina in 2008. Parents found the
book inappropriate. Discussions about problems described in novels should be
used to explore these issues. Banning material about matters that may be deemed
inappropriate to some, in no way prevent them from being part of history and,
in some cases, what is still present in society.
http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics/reasons Retrieved 03/19/2014
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