The Role Of Written Communication In The Color Purple

Abstract

Alice Walker is a courageous thinker, a prolific and imaginative artist, who within a relatively short span of time has become a touchstone in Black Literature. Walker’s most important contribution to literary history is her rescue of the classic works of the Southern ancestor Zora Neale Hurston. Walker has published several novels, many collections of short stories, poetry, essays etc. The main themes of her writings are the struggle of a black woman and her active participation and hearty desire to establish her identity in a society which is full of racial and gender discrimination. Through her writings Walker has always tried to draw the attention of people towards black woman living in America. All of her female characters seem to be trapped in a complex relationship or societal taboo but the way they come out of their problems is praiseworthy. In the present study, one of the most popular novel of Alice Walker The Color Purple has been taken for analysis. This stunning novel, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 making the Georgia-born author and poet the first black woman ever to receive the award for fiction. The main focus of Alice Walker is on the spiritual survival of the black people especially the black women and this can be possible, Walker suggests, through communication. As she opines that it is only through words that her characters share their secrets, disburden their hearts and get maturity to respect her self-hood. Communication becomes a great source of relief for the persons who are silently suffering. Written in epistolary style, the novel consists of the letters of Cleie, the protagonist, addressed to God, and then to her sister Nettie. Letters become the only way for Celie to express herself, and is the only key for the reader to have a better and deeper understanding for Celie. The epistolary technique of the novel gives her a voice when she was not heard, and an opportunity to be heard without facing objections.