African Folklore In Alice Walker's The Color Purple

The black literature (Afro-American literature) is a main branch of American literature. In the first half of the twentieth century, under the influence of the multicultural trend of thought, black literature begins to rise and tend to move towards prosperity. More and more black writers are conscious that in order to shake off the racialism, the social position of their nation must be raised.Alice Walker is one of the most famous black women writers in the contemporary American literature. As a talented, versatile, and productive writer, she has achieved great success in many fields such as poetry, essay, short story, novel, and children's book. In her works, she tries to describe the fine tradition and customs of black culture, showing that the forces and status of the black nation still can not be changed even in the United States where the whites are in the dominant position. Many people know her because of her novel The Color Purple. In this novel, the author describes a large number of African custom matters, reflecting her love of black culture and national pride. This novel has been studied in many aspects by many scholars at home and abroad, but few people have analyzed it from the perspective of folklore. This thesis aims to probe into Alice Walker's national consciousness in The Color Purple from the perspective of folklore.Folklore studies the cultural traditions of a nation or a society from many perspectives: their contents, forms, styles and transmitting processes and methods. Literature, as one of the most important means to reflect one nation's spiritual civilization and national mentality, is closely related to folklore. Folklore is originally created because of human beings' needs of living, through which one nation's material civilization and spiritual life can be seen. Different nations have different folklore, and unique folklore makes a nation keep unique national characteristic with its specific custom and national language.Folklore makes no distinction between the good and the bad. Every nation has its own folklore. Alice Walker is an advocator of black culture. She depicts much folklore matters in her masterpiece The Color Purple: African oral literature, folk residential tradition, folk medicine, folk beliefs as well as the custom of patchwork quilt-making, costumes and tattoos etc. The depiction of the folklore shows Walker's love for black culture and strong national consciousness. Meanwhile, Afro-American's adherence to African folklore challenges the dominant white culture, with which they claim African national culture is equal to the white culture.After some specific exposition of the African folklore in The Color Purple, the importance of it is also interpreted: African folklore not only can awaken Afro-Americans' national consciousness, but also plays a major role to help them extricate from identity dilemma.In the novel, Afro-Americans are all stuck in the dilemma: whether they are in white-stream America or in Africa where they have same nation with Africans, they are discriminated by the white Americans so that they are forced to give up African cultural tradition to integrate into American society. Meanwhile, they are excluded by native Africans as there are no African traits on them. Accordingly, the conclusion comes as the fact that they must inherit the essence of African folklore and forsake dross of them, could Afro-Americans break away from this dilemma and possibly integrate into American society.Therefore, this thesis is to disclose how African folklore in The Color Purple serve to reconstruct Afro-Americans' past and connect Afro-Americans and Africans.