A Study Of The Color Purple From The Perspective Of Culture

Since the 1970s, black feminist literature began to rise and tend to move towards prosperity. Lots of African American women writers have been managing to express black cultural heritage and black women's consciousness and liberation in different ways. They have made great contributions to American literature as well as the world literature.Alice Walker is one of the most influential and remarkable contemporary African American women writers in the literary world. In the course of writing, she realizes that spreading African American culture is the only way to raise the blacks'self-respect and self-confidence, and make the black culture survive in the white-culture patriarchal society. Her viewpoint is shown in her masterpiece The Color Purple, which reflects her deep love for African American culture and her sense of national pride. This thesis will discuss in great detail Walker's African American cultural heritage complex embodied in her masterpiece.This thesis consists of three chapters in addition to the Introduction and the Conclusion. The Introduction offers some necessary background information about Alice Walker and The Color Purple, lists the critical reviews on The Color Purple home and abroad, and makes clear the purpose and significance of this research.Chapter One expounds the significance of culture in The Color Purple. Culture is the study of all aspects of human life, so no one can surpass his own cultural heritage and cultural context. In the novel, Alice Walker holds that every nation has its own peculiar culture. Only through cleaving to black cultural heritage can black women find their identities. She also holds that cultures make no distinction between the good and the bad. African American culture is indispensable to the development of American culture as well as world culture.Chapter Two explores African American women's resistance against white patriarchal culture through the discussions of language and religious belief. The story happens at the first half of the 20th century and was written in 1982. This period was eventful in American history. On account of African Americans'peculiar experiences, black culture unavoidably crashes with white mainstream culture. For African Americans, there is a choice between these two cultures. Shug, Celie and other black women in the novel have realized their political and cultural oppressions, so they challenge the mainstream culture in different ways. Through these women, Walker declares to the world: black culture is equal to white culture.Chapter Three makes a detailed analysis of the African American cultural heritage embodied in the novel, covering such aspects as sisterhood, extended family, folk customs and myth. With incomparable insight, Walker weaves African American cultural heritage into a quilt of compassion that she spreads before the world—full, rich, and flowing. Through her exhaustive portrayal, Walker shows her love for African American culture clearly in her writing.The Conclusion summarizes Walker's national consciousness rooted from African American cultural heritage. The Color Purple contains rich and profound ingredients of black culture and displays Alice Walker's viewpoint on her native culture. Walker believes that only when the African Americans identify their nationality, discard the dross and select the essence of the cultural heritage, can African American culture be invincible and coexist with white mainstream culture.On the whole, The Color Purple reflects magnificent scenery of African American culture to the world. As well, it arouses African Americans'pride to their native culture and encourages them to do their utmost to maintain and enrich it. At the end of the thesis, it points out the significance of interpreting the novel from the perspective of culture, which, despite its limitations, throws new light on the study of the novel and indicates new room for further research on this topic.