Comparison Of The Theme In The Novel The Color Purple And Its Movie Adaptation

The Color Purple is a canonical novel written by the famous writer Alice Walker and has been acclaimed since its publication. The novel made her the first black woman win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Reward in1983. Written in epistolary style, the book tells us a story about a black suppressed woman who transforms herself into a brave and independent woman through her fights. Alice Walker’s womanism theory is fully expressed in the book. The well-known director Steven Spielberg adapted this novel to a movie, which became a box office smash but received eleven Academy Award nominations.The novel has been studying by some researchers from different perspectives. Some researchers pay attentions to the particular form of the novel to probe into the psychological changes of the heroine, and others focus on the transformation of black woman from feminism point of view. However, there are few studies on the comparison between the novel and Steven Spielberg’s movie adaptation. By making a comparison of them, this thesis analyzes the consistency and variation that the movie has made to the original book, and aims to find out the reasons and effects of Spielberg’s adaptation.This thesis consists of four chapters. Introduction tells us Alice Walker and Steven Spielberg in terms of their growth environment and achievements. Chapter one describes the rise and development of feminism, the overseas and domestic research of the book. Chapter two deals with the consistency of the novel and its movie adaptation. It is further divided into three parts:the consistency of criticism on the patriarchal black community, the consistency of criticism on the racial discrimination, the consistency of treasuring black people’s heritage. Chapter three dwells on the variation of the movie to the original book. It includes the different ideas toward Christianity, the segregation of the females from males and the weakening of racism. Chapter four focuses on the reasons of variation, in respect of the different art form, the historical context, the adapter’s ideological impacts and the purpose of the film.The movie successfully paves the way for African American stories on the big screen. Though Steven Spielberg claims that the movie would fully represent black people, especially the black woman’s interests, the influence of mainstream white people’s ideologies can still be found in the movie.