Analysis of the Language Used in 'the Colour Purple"

482 Words2 Pages
Since it was first published in 1982, The Color Purple has become an icon of literature that heals, that enlightens, and that empowers. Its audience has always been broad: the novel garnered major literary awards and dazzled highbrow critics while demonstrating equally strong commercial appeal. Readers from all walks of life have found themselves awed by the novel’s narrator, Celie. Despite these triumphant images, this is a novel that begins with a fourteen-year-old girl’s cry for help. Celie has suffered repeated rapes and brutal beatings by the man she believes to be her father, who tells her, in the novel’s opening line, “You better not never tell nobody but God.” After becoming pregnant by him twice, she is terrified that he has now set his sights on her younger sister, Nettie. Celie’s initial thoughts are shared with us in the form of her letters to God, written in a voice that uses raw realism—the only language she knows—to convey the facts of her life. It is this authenticity that sets The Color Purple apart; critics who feel offended by Celie’s voice miss the fact that her candor is itself an aspect of her stolen innocence. These opening scenes reveal the dangers of secrecy and misinformation as the heroine pines for one thing: an education. Her tragic home life prevents her from fulfilling that dream. Her youth and innocence is shown through the basic language, because it tells the audience she is uneducated, and therefore is not allowed to make her own decisions. Educated people tend to also ignore their accent when they write, unlike Celie, who’s strong dialect shows in the writing, with words such as “kine,” and “git,” to replace ‘kind’ and ‘get’. Not only are the lexis cultural, but the syntax is too. “When that hurt, I cry,” shows not only how uneducated Celie is, but also how strong her accent is, particularly as she doesn’t know to maintain the
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