Coherence And Variation

Alice Walker is an African American writer who has written at length on issues ofrace and gender. She is most famous for the novel The Color Purple which made her asthe first black woman win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Reward in1983. Written in epistolary style, the book tells the story of black women struggling theirway through not only racist white culture but also patriarchal black culture. By depictingtheir lives, Alice Walker’s womanism theory is fully expressed in the book. In1985Steven Spielberg adapted this novel to a Hollywood movie, which became a box officesmash and received eleven Academy Award nominations.The research of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple has been a hotspot at home andabroad ever since its publication. However, there is few study of Steven Spielberg’smovie adaptation, not to mention the comparison between them. By making acomparative reading of the book and the film, this thesis analyzes the coherence andvariation that the movie has made to the original book, and thus aims to find out thereasons and effects of Spielberg’s adaptation.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One serves as an introduction to AliceWalker, Steven Spielberg and their career achievements, literature review of the novelThe Color Purple, feminism, womanism and the layout of the thesis. Chapter Two dwellson the coherence of the movie The Color Purple to the original novel. Chapter Threedeals with the variation of the movie to the original book. The concern of Chapter Four iscauses and effects of Steven Spielberg’s movie adaptation of the novel The Color Purple.Chapter Five draws the conclusion that the movie successfully opens a door for AfricanAmerican stories in the big screen, but despite Spielberg’s claim that the movie wouldfully represent black people, especially black women’s interests, influence of mainstreamwhite people’s ideologies can still be found out in the movie.