The Colourful Conciliation in Alice Walker's The Color Purple

The Color Purple is a rewriting of the powerful patriarchal order existed in the Afro-American community. The age old struggle for liberation and assertion of individuality as a human being is a terrible battle waged by the Black community in the colonized communities, particularly in the White dominated societies. The coloured people are always an object of ill-treatment and sexual harassment. Even the evangelical people also misused the natives. But the Harlem Renaissance opened new vistas for counter propaganda. Many glittering literary luminaries from the Black community emerged and fought a battle for the noble and necessary causes. Alice Walker thus depicts the saga of the oppressed in a powerful way and it has created a momentum in the history of the struggle of the Afro-Americans. The protagonist and her stepson’s wife react to the oppression in exactly opposite ways. While one is a silent sufferer, the other one is a powerful fighter. The novel is most obviously the story of Celie’s changing fortunes from oppression to liberation. Though through a different approach, Harpo the young black native also reaches conciliation, and it is in tune with the women folk’s liberation ventures.

Aim of the article

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1983) is an outstanding work of a leading Afro American woman. In this lovely painful fictional work, rape, racial and social oppression and colonialism play a very significant role. Celie the protagonist is a silent sufferer. This article aims to establish that silence just like resistance is also a powerful weapon for the liberation of the traditionally oppressed black women.