A Study Of Irony Inalice Walker’s Novel The Color Purple

Since the seventy years ninety century, the American black literature has arisen inbrand-new situation. A new force, namely black female writer has suddenly arisen, andAlice Walker is one of them. She was born in1944, a black peasant family in the southGeorgia Ethan in American. Her father is a peasant and his mother worked as a servant.Poor family and social prejudice made her deeply understand the hardship and sufferingof being black. Alice’s representative novel is the epistolary novel The Color Purplewritten in1982. Once published, it attracts worldwide attention, and won successivelythree awards for works in American Literature: the Pulitzer Prize, the National BookAward and the National Book Critics Association awards. As her most successful novel,the famous critic Peter PreScott regarded it as “an American novel of permanentimportant.”(Peter PreScott,1985:67) Some critics have pointed out that The ColorPurple didn’t repeatedly lay special stress on the unequal relationship between black andwhite, while explored the relationship between the black inside, for example, therelationship between black men and women and black family relationship. Duringexamining the survival and development of black women in details and with her uniquephilosophy of love, Alice Walker coined womanism, which emphasizes the doubleeffects of womanism against racial and gender discrimination, and advocates a tolerancespirit of harmony between men and women as a goal. As a result, Black critics MaryHelen Washington once enthusiastically praised her as a apologists and spokesman forblack women. Many studies about Alice Walker have been done in recent years, whichinvolved in the research area of religious, racial discrimination, homosexual andcolonialism problem in Africa. The domestic studies on The Color Purple are relativelyconcentrated on the analysis of Alice Walker’s narrative and structure of works, such asthe narrative strategy, change s of perspective of view, the novel’s narrative point ofview, mode of discourse and so forth. But few have been preceded on the application ofirony analysis in The Color Purple. The writing technique in the novel is quite differentfrom the traditional writers, mainly includes the epistolary narrative, literary criticism,metaphor and symbolism and so forth, the use of irony makes the connotation of TheColor Purple more abundant and the theme more unequivocal. Therefore, this papertries to use the theory of irony to study the function of irony in The Color Purple.The purpose of this thesis: firstly, to elaborate the related theories of irony. Thecentral idea of the novel text that tries to convey expresses by means of irony. This paper will apply the irony theories such as D. C. Muecke’s three grades of irony, namelyovert, covert and private irony, and Booth’s stable irony and unstable irony to analyzethe novel. Hence, the research about the irony of The Color Purple can deepen theunderstanding of the subject. Secondly, this paper carries on a research from theperspective of characters and plots with the objective to understand the novel’s thewriting techniques and the imply meanings. The theme of character is a striking featureinAlice walker’s novel.This paper expounds the irony in The Color Purple mainly from the angle of thecharacters and the plots. And in the fourth chapter analyzes the irony of the heroines andplots in The Color Purple. Through analyzing heroines as victims in the novel take ondifferent measures to fight with men’s oppression to reveal the irony to the patriarchalsociety. And the hugest irony is Celie’s awakening. In the fifth chapter discusses theironic effects and methods of the hero characters and plots in The Color Purple. It willconcentrate on the oppressors in the novel, and by discussing the oppression from fatherto son in the patriarchal society to expose the defects of the patriarchal society so as toachieve ironic effects. Mr.X’s changes in the novel exactly manifest this point. By usingirony to carry on analysis about Alice walker’s The Color Purple, readers will find AliceWalker seems to enrich the implication connotation through common language. Thecomparison between skillfully language and controllable description, remarkablenarrative techniques combined with clues to understand irony, which all make thecharacters of the novel stereo and the theme bright. And understanding the irony of thenovel makes readers deeply understand the use of irony in the novel.In a word, this thesis will combine the theory of irony and the understanding ofThe Color Purple so as to analyze the use of irony in The Color Purple. Through thestudy of irony in The Color Purple, the process can be found that in the novel the heroesand heroines are oppressed by the patriarchal society and gain awakening through innerstruggle. Thus, the study of irony in The Color Purple can help us understand irony inAlice walker’s text, and reveal the multiple themes The Color Purple conveyed todemonstrate the love between the black men and black women and the good will ofharmonious coexistence between blacks and whites.