Oh, Those Purple Flowers

In the novel The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, there are two sisters. These sisters, Celie and Nettie, aren’t very far apart age wise, but in experiences, they can be polar opposites. They started in the same place, on a farm with their Pa, (who later turns out to be their step-pa and actually unrelated to them) who rapes Celie when his new wife fell ill. After this, he set his sights on Nettie, but Celie manages to refocus his attention on her, saving her sister, but causing Celie to become pregnant, twice. While traveling their two paths, Celie and Nettie each experience different iterations of the same thing, faith in religion, gender inequality, and general independence.

One of the big recurring themes in this novel is religion, or, more specifically, the faith of Celie and Nettie. After a while of writing everything that happens to her to god, Celie eventually loses faith, seeing as bad things continue to happen to her with no intervention from said god. When she realises that her faith has waned, her first letter starts like this:

“Dear Nettie, I don’t write to go no more. I write to you” (p.192)

Not only does this personify her waning faith in religion, but it shows her unwavering faith that her sister will overcome hardship to return to her. Before she wrote to a god, now she writes to her sister, that says a lot about how highly she thinks of Nettie. Nettie on the other hand, never loses her faith. In fact, her missionary work in Africa most likely worked to increase her faith in god. Nettie expresses this faith when she say this in one of her letters:

“Oh Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing... pray for us” (p. 185)

Here she points out to Celie that not believing in anything is a terrible thing. It pulls a person apart. Is this true for everyone? Probably not. But in these girl’s lives it would appear that their faith is vital. Without it, they won’t wake up the next day and move on with their lives. She also mentions praying... while in these days it just means keep us in your thoughts, I think that Nettie actually meant for Celie to stop and pray to the lord for them, believing that it could help Nettie’s ailing friend.

Within the book The Color Purple there is quite a bit of gender inequality. Women are viewed as not much more than tools for the men. Tools to do the jobs they don’t want to do, things to beat when they’re angry, things they can do whatever they want with. But not all women. In this book, Celie and Nettie start in the same place, but while Celie ends up with one of these heathen slobs previously described, Nettie ends up as a missionary in Africa, doing what she pleases. One brutal and stark reality of this book is physical abuse. Most women are beaten, but only most women. Sofia, Harpo’s wife (Harpo being Celie’s son-in-law), thinks enough of the world to fight tooth and nail with anyone trying to hit her, so when Celie advises Harpo to beat Sofia, trouble arises:

“Then what you say it for? she ast... ‘cause I’m jealous... [why]?...[because you can] fight. I say” (p.40)

When Harpo tries to beat Sofia into minding him, she retaliates, hitting him just as hard as he hit her, and Harpo, being who he is, tells her that Celie gave him this ill-fated advice. And so Sofia confronts Celie, in the hopes of an explanation. It is at this point that we realize just how damaged Celie is, and just how brainwashed most of their society is. Later on Shug finds out about Mr. beating Celie. Why? she asks. And Celie says:

“[He beat me] for being me and not you” (p.75)

and here is where one of our more fortunate characters realizes just how bad it could be. While all of this is happening, Nettie is in Africa, where the missionaries treat women as almost equals, especially the pair of missionaries Nettie travels with. Consequently, we get this stark contrast of Nettie never being beaten, and Celie being beaten constantly.

In this novel , Nettie and Celie both have very different situations. Not all of them pertained to gender inequality or religion though. There are a few points of comparison that would fit better into the miscellaneous category. For one thing, while Nettie gets a chance to overcome the common gender inequality, her sister Celie never gets such a chance. For example, Nettie is allowed to make her own choices in life; who she marries, where she goes, how she lives.

“But Nettie never gave up. Next thing I know [she has] Miss Beasley at our house trying to talk to Pa.” (p. 10)

This exemplifies Nettie’s independence by expressing her ability to fight for something she believed in. She believed that Celie should continue school, but when Pa said no, instead of giving up, she fought. She pushed back, unafraid of the consequences.Nettie and Celie both started in the same place and the same time, which just makes their radically different lives even more interesting. While Celie is raped and bears the children of her stepfather, Nettie manages to escape his attention. When Nettie catches the eye of a widower at church, their paths converge once again.

“She good with children, Pa say... Mr. say, that cow still coming?” (p.11)

Mr. ____ expresses interest in Celie only after he is informed that he cannot be married off to Nettie. While being offered to Mr., with Pa prattling on about her good “selling points”, Mr. has more interest in her dowry, or inheritance. Her dowry was simple, a single cow that she had bonded with. And this single cow, means more to Mr. than the girl herself. So poor Celie sacrifices herself once again so that her sister can lead a better life. However, Nettie has to return later in Celie's marriage to Mr. as something of a refugee... running from their "lowdown dirty dog" of a step father, who, with Celie gone, had advanced on Nettie. And when Mr.’s “affection” for Nettie remanifests and the girl rejects him, Mr. gets mad. He boots Nettie from his house, yelling after her that she might as well be dead to Celie, for all the contact they’ll make from that point forward.

So in Celie and Nettie’s lives, they each experience different things with similar situations such as general independence, religious faith, and gender inequality. With text and examples from the book, this essay has taken a look at each of these things more in depth. And what has it found? This essay has discovered that Celie is unselfish, giving herself up to save Nettie often. We have learned that Nettie is the support that keeps Celie going, that keystone that if you remove it, the whole archway come tumbling down on your head. The author, Alice Walker, did a good job of pointing out to us how childhood beliefs can affect our entire lives, of how the seemingly little thing, can become these huge things we never saw coming.