Day 15 Issues February 26, 2002
1.
Names. Jeff Dumas' Forum presentation
at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Centennial Hall 104.
“Terrorism, Human Error, and Dangerous Technologies.”
Documentation guidelines.
About exam: last chance to ask questions! Again, I will expect you to have prepared and researched; because I’m giving you the questions and letting you bring materials, I will expect essays that aren’t necessarily finely polished but that are thick with details and particulars and terms and ideas we’ve encountered. If you’ve missed classes, you can find that information in the readings and on the web site, though you’ll have to go looking for it. If these seem like hard questions, well, they are. Bring your chosen materials on Thursday and be ready to write. And remember the Pledge.
After break: have War Memorials read by Thursday. Half are on to respond for Tuesday, half for Thursday (revised schedule).
2. Last day on Color Purple. First, let’s take a little time for questions about what happens. Some journals indicated a little confusion about events . . .
Next chapter, 180 ff: showdown #1 with Albert. “It’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation.” He tries to put her down again, but this time she has an answer.
Aside on Harpo trying to rule over Sofia. It was part of her getting into the fight, she says.
Albert tries to slap Celie, she sticks him with her case knife. What will people think? Shug; “Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.” They laugh at the men. Sofia’s youngest, Henrietta, isn’t Harpo’s. Squeak will go North too. . . and Sofia will take care of Suzie Q, Squeak’s daughter with Harpo.
(One of the fascinating things about this book is the way “family” keeps being defined and redefined. It’s much more a matter of who loves who than who is legally or formally bound, hmm?)
The turning point might be on 187: Celie’s curse: Albert says “you nothing at all.” She says, “But I’m here.” She’s possessed, it seems; the winds come to her aid. She finally decides not to be a victim, though not without help.
Celie comes to her strength partly as she becomes a writer, as she learns to express her feelings and her human worth. The centrality of speech and communication to this novel: from being so isolated that she has to write to God, to talking to Shug, writing to Nettie, talking to Albert openly and on the same level, not him giving orders.
193: work, money, friends, love, time. One sort of “happy” ending would stop somewhere around here, or jump from here to Nettie and the children returning. But no. The plantationizing of the Olinka; Nettie and Samuel marry; so do Adam and Tashi; they go to England, find no help there. Nettie writes about how God is different to them too, after all their time in Africa, 227.
And Shug takes off with Germaine, for one last fling, leaving Celie. It’s hard for her, but it does allow her to form some kind of relationship with Albert. (238). And Eleanor Jane, the white woman who hangs around Sofia because her own family’s such a mess, ends up cooking for Henrietta.
247 Albert says: “I think us here to wonder. . . . The more I wonder, the more I start to love.”
Also, a longstanding quasi-literary theme that goes back at least to Keats and Shelley: the duty of hope. Walker wants to believe in the possibility of human change without ignoring the awful things we continue to do. Maybe a touch idealistic, but so what. The movie goes even further this way, with the last big production number and the honkytonk and the church folk all dancing together. Personally I prefer the more restrained ending of the book.
In what ways does the book play against stereotypes or predictable outcomes? Celie’s reconciliation with Albert? Her drifting away from Shug? The book doesn’t end with a re-formed nuclear family, does it? Or does it?
Do you think it treats men unfairly? Which men in particular? Certainly it focuses on some black men’s attitudes and behaviors as a problem for black women.
What allows Celie to develop? Love and work, Freud said, were the secrets of adult happiness . . . she develops relationships, confidence, she makes money, she finds out she can do things others value.
*Where and how does it suggest liberation comes? What are the stages that Celie goes through? What resources does she discover? What changes for her, and what has to change within her? How do others change around her? Margaret Atwood, “to refuse to be a victim.” Shug can’t liberate Celie without her help. Celie forces Albert to confront his actions, and he turns out to be less than completely worthless after all.
Walker’s a civil rights veteran; the steps toward nonviolent resistance in the Gandhi/King mode:
1. Recognize the oppression.
2. Learn to hope. The need for models: Shug, Sofia.
3. Avoid violence as vengeance, Sofia: needle, not razor.
4. Love and solidarity: Shug, others
5. Work and independence: positive action away from victimization.
6. Forgiveness and reconciliation as equals. Refusal of hatred, recognition of the humanity of the adversary. Albert and Eleanor Jane need liberation as much as the oppressed.
What makes it possible for Albert to change? “You know meanness kill.” He gives her the last letters. He starts to treat her like a human being, rather than a possession.
How might we connect this book with other things we’ve read and discussed? What about J/H and the possibility of change without or with lessened violence? What does it suggest about possibilities for working things out, for changing attitudes and behaviors, for mending the disastrous inequalities that blight so many peoples’ lives?
Ryan Zeman
The website I found,
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9089/colorpurple-celie_growth.html
, dealt
with the growth in the life
of Celie and how she finally was able to stick
up for herself.
Brittney Selden
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/04/specials/walker-color.html A review of the book by Mel Watkins, published in the New York Times in 1982.
Scott Van Eman
My website focuses on the idea of the Memphis blues scene.
It has several biographies of legendary blues artist. The one of "Memphis
Minnie" seemed to relate to the time and talents of Squeak and Shug. http://www.blueflamecafe.com/index.html
Matt McMahan
For my webpage I picked this one because it gives all kinds of
information on Alice Walker. It tells about her life growing up, and her
inspirations. At the bottom of the page it gives a list of links for her
writings and other information and sites to see about her. There is even a link
that takes you to a interview with her. The website is :
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/AliceWalker.html