On The Narrative Features Of The Color Purple

Alice Walker is recognized as one of the most prominent figures in contemporary American literature. The Color Purple is her masterpiece, which presents the struggle of a poor southern black woman named Celie who eventually triumphs over oppression to obtain equality, freedom and female awareness through affirming female relationships. The Color Purple, first published in 1982, aroused acclaims as well as criticisms among contemporary reviewers. In spite of that, it is still considered as a significant work in the canon of American literature.The authoress uses a variety of narrative forms to create vivid, memorable, and larger-than-life characters. The present thesis intends to analyze the narrative features of The Color Purple, such as the deliberate and delicate use of African American Vernacular English, the unique employment of blanks in the form of letters, the absence of names, the process of subverting patriarchal discourse to reconstruct female subjectivity, by which Alice Walker reveals the themes of the novel, for example, the oppressed black women's pursuit of their own worth and the sense of meaning in life. The First Chapter explores the novel's eloquent use of Black English Vernacular. The voices of Celie and Nettie contrast sharply with each other. Nettie's language is formal and indoctrinated whereas Celie's is free and colloquial. Through the contrast, Alice Walker vividly presents the differences and the similarities of the Black English and the White English. What the authoress tries to suggest is that the Blacks and the Whites are essentially the same and equal. This is an indication of the national consciousness Walker has. The Color Purple is a novel narrated in letters. The process that the sender's address as well as the addressee's signature and the men's names undergoes from absence to emergence implies Celie's mental journey from numbness to awakening and finally to resistance and criticizes the irrationality in the social relationship between men and women, promoting the female consciousness of self-respect and the feminist motives of equality and independence. Through detailed textual analysis, the Third Chapter discusses how Celie, after experiencingfailed exchanges and silent endurance, wrests her language from those who would persecute and silence her and as a consequence, she tells her story in her own words with great courage. It is therefore concluded that only by finding a feminine language and a unique voice in communication with women can black women subvert the patriarchal discourse so as to reconstruct their female subjectivity.In The Color Purple, Alice Walker gives an examination of black women's political condition and the state of life under both racial and sexual oppression, sings praise of the struggle against the double oppression and their search for the integrity of self and life and encourages them to reshape their personality. The Color Purple sets a very good example of Afro-American female literature and leads their culture to the open future. It changes the marginal status of Afro-American literature to explore the meaning of life by way of literature.