The Color Purple from a First Person Perspective

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o What are the consequences for The Color Purple of its being written from a first person perspective? Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is written from a first person perspective which allows us to engage much more with Celie and allows us to see her grow as a person over time and how she acquires a voice in her search for selfhood. In this essay I will focus on the consequences of Walkers decision to write from a first person perspective and how the reader engages with Celies feelings and thoughts within the events she undergoes throughout the novel. ‘Through the eyes of Celie, Walker presents such a realistic picture of the conditions of the black that no one can even think of any kind of exaggeration.’(Boynukara, 2011, 282) For Celie writing is just a substitution for speaking. She does not have any power neither in the society nor her family, thus she is led to alienation. Celie is driven into writing for expressing herself. Celie begins to write letters when she is fourteen years old, she is uneducated and the letters are addressed to god because of her father’s threat ‘You'd better not never tell nobody but God’ (Walker 1). Celie is alienated and must tell no ‘body’. Walker’s use of God allows Celie to be expressive in her writing as nobody actually sees what she writes. Walker decides to write through black vernacular English and Celies poor spelling and grammar throughout the letters enables the reader to pay much more attention to what she is trying to say and slows down the pace at which the novel is read, capturing everything she writes. However as the novel progresses Celie abandons God. Celie stops addressing her letters to God. Not only does she stop writing to him but she stops mentioning him at all. It’s as though she’s lost all faith in the world. Celie envisions God and his angels as all white, ‘like albinos’ (Walker 96). For the first half of

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