Day 12 Issues 14 February 2002
1. Names. Happy Valentine’s Day. Kind of odd, perhaps, to be reading this book on the day dedicated to romantic love . . . but hey.
About the surveys: the consensus was generally positive. There were lots of questions about the exam, which I’ll send around momentarily. Some complaints about “hit and run” use of web sites, which I recognize and will try to do better with. Bigger screen may help a little with legibility. Partly of course it’s a time problem.
Another point several noted was getting to modern issues and history, and we’re getting there as of just about now. I agree that should be the focus of the course; what we’ve done so far is give ourselves some context and background for talking about recent and current issues.
About the web site: it’s ok if you haven’t been there, I just wanted to check. It’s at http://www.bluffton.edu/~gundyj/ModAm/Modamer.html
or from the BC home page go to Faculty, faculty web pages, Gundy, and then down the page to the course link. The address is also on the exam, and I think that you’re likely to find it esp. useful as you’re working on the exam.
Distribute exam and discuss. My aims: to send you back into all this information we’ve been gathering, with an eye for particular material now. To get you to pick and choose as you research, to think about issues, to frame theses and support them with specific information. Most of these questions can be answered in many different and valid ways, if you write clearly and show that you understand the issues and texts involved.
2. On Color Purple. I want to be sure that we look closely at some crucial moments of the text, along with considering what it means, what patterns and themes emerge and how they connect with those we’ve been talking about all semester.
It’s about African-American experience in America, of course, but it’s also about black women, about men and women, about violence and several kinds of oppression, and about freedom and empowerment and various kinds of resistance too.
Starting point: what do you think are the “big issues” that the book raises and that we ought to talk about? Make a list on board. Sex, religion, gender roles, economics, race, family, work, history, language, violence, abuse, incest, activism, solidarity, love . . . some become more evident as things continue.
Having listed all these things, I’d like next to shift to the specific and particular—to examine characters and events and even the style and point of view. Doing that will help us consider the “big issues” more carefully when we circle back to them, I think.
3. Some issues and ideas on Color Purple:
-Opening. Why does the book start the way it does? When the narrator gets raped by her father on the first page, what is left? What’s the purpose? To create a deliberate and radical shock, to set up the conditions under which she has to exist?
-Notice the dialect, as I’m sure you did. “Be” for “is,” or verb left out, also verb endings omitted. Highly economical, and surprisingly expressive, I think. Watch also for changes in the language and form as the book continues: who the letters are addressed to, for example. And different characters speak different dialects.
-Why do you suppose this letter form? Notice the first line in italics. That’s (I think) the only break from the epistolary form. It’s the form of the very first novels, of course, but why use it here? She’s forbidden, of course, to “tell anybody but God.” Who else can she talk to? Esp. after Nettie leaves. The theme of silence and speech, of secrets and threats and the struggle to overcome them.
-In many ways this is a very traditional novel: emphasis on family relationships, generations, change and testing. Even the suspense about Nettie being dead and the grand reunion at the end is straight out of Dickens.
-On another level, though, it’s also a book about hierarchies: color, money, sex, beauty, education: a poor and ugly and uneducated black woman is at the very bottom, hmm? How do you act in that position? How do you survive? What kinds of force can you marshall? Ignorance: her daddy won’t send her to school, Shug has to teach about her own body.
-Marriage, sex, love. 17-18 talking marriage. 21 on her wedding day. 24 Nettie: It’s like seeing you buried. 30: Why he beat me? She my wife. Plus she stubborn. 52 She notices his weak chin. 22-3 Her little girl--the children her father took from her at birth. All throughout a confusion of children, weddings, cohabitations and the like, hmm?
-Harpo and Sofia: a parallel but distinct saga: Sofia who won’t be pushed around by anyone. 42-3 How to make her mind? Celie says “Beat her.” Their fights, following; 46 Celie and Sofia, their confrontation and forgiveness. 62 ff. Harpo’s eating: “Some womens can’t be beat.” She gets disgusted and leaves. Women connecting with other women.
-Ways of coping: 25: Nettie says “You’ve got to fight,” Celie says all she knows is to stay alive. 29 Kate, Mr. ------’s sister, says the same thing. 30: “I made myself wood. . . . That’s how come I know trees fear man.” 37: she cares for the children, but feels nothing. Cooking, with Harpo: these people are not destitute, just poor. 47 on Heaven, now or later. And making things: quilt pieces from messed up curtains.
-Shug Avery: 16, 28, 33: Even before Celie meets her she knows there’s something about her, she’s interested more than threatened even when Mr. ---- brings her home. 48-51 she comes, sick. Albert’s his name. 53-55: Why is Celie attracted to Shug? Her looks, her spirit? 58 Mr. -------’s daddy: Celie spits in his water when he talks bad about Shug. That chapter: she starts to feel part of something, even though it’s not something the world would understand: she, Shug, and Mr. -----.
Jamie Burke
http://www.ncvc.org/infolink/info29.htm
I chose a web site that had many facts and statistics about incest. I wanted to see how many shildren were still victims of incest. I knew that a lot of children get abused by a family member. When people use the term incest, it puts a whole new spin on it. It makes people more aware for some reason of the issue.
Eric Burdette
I found a couple of websites listing some
facts about domestic violence, since it seems to be very relevant to the novel.
http://www.cybergrrl.com/views/dv//book/myth.html
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/4867.html
Ewa Budzynska
I found two websites that
are loosely related to the topic. The first one is
about the sharecropping
system, the second one about female jazz musicians.
http://www.pbs.org/jazz/time/time_women.htm
Tony Cleveland
I chose http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/alicew/ as my website. It describes the life of Alice Walker. It mentions that she received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for The Color Purple and also provides links to many other sites. These links connect to other poems, essays, interviews, and articles by Alice Walker.
Lisa Bard
One thing I didn’t notice until reading this one thing off the Internet at http://www.gradesaver.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/The_Color_Purple/wwwboard/messages/358.html that Celie and Shug were both with Mr. ______ and Shug had his respect and Celie didn’t.
Matt Chiles
The Internet site that I
found is about Alice Walker. It mainly
tells her biography, and has a lot of links on it to look at.
< http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~melindaj/alice.html>
Kyle Cutnaw
Here is my website related to the reading:
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/purple.html
This website has discussion
questions and other links to resources about
Alice Walker.