Day 13 2/18/03
1. Names. Finish Color
Purple Thursday. Juhnke Friday. Next Tues. is open, Thursday is midterm exam. I’ll
be out of town that day; I’m leaning toward a take-home exam, and would give
you the questions on Thursday and make Tuesday an optional review period.
2. In the news:
On information and public opinion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/18/opinion/18KRUG.html
Caroline on pay inequality: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/business/17WOME.html?th
Perry, views on delay:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-babbin021403.asp
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030303&s=schell
Becky on death penalty in
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,78768,00.html
Adam on women at
http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/story?id=1506736
Laura on big snow:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/nyregion/17WIRE-SNOW.html
Andrea on 21 killed in
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22631-2003Feb17.html.
Jenny on mom learning to swear:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3905/kids_excited.html
3. On Color Purple:
A. Walker as “Womanist”:
”Thirty-five years younger than Welty and nineteen years younger than O’Connor, Walker is
more radical in her politics, which one might expect from a writer who fought
on the front lines in the Civil Rights wars. In "In Search of My Mother's
Garden," an intriguing book of essays by
Note that
“In the title essay,
1. the physically and psychologically abused black woman
2. the exceptional black woman torn by "contrary instincts"
3. the new black
woman who can create herself out the legacy of her maternal ancestors”
http://www.uwyo.edu/wch/bdpguidecp.htm
Which of these is which in CP? Celie is the first, Shug the second, right? And then the question is whether Celie can become the third. . . .
B.
Where does Nettie fit into this scheme? Is she another potential #3? What about
her story, and all that
B. Lesbianism, and to what extent Celie is a “real” lesbian and to what extent she’s just desperate for love and human connection. What do you think? What is it, really, that she gains from her affair with Shug?
C.
The law and the justice system.
D.
Women and education and how to respond to oppression. At first Celie’s response is not just passivity, but acceptance of
her ignorance and powerlessness. Being a tree: trees are not just hard, they’re immobile and, well, dumb, right? 122-123 Nettie to Celie on God and keeping quiet and ignorance and
learning. 124: “There are colored people in the world who want us to
know!” Seeing
What’s Celie’s first response to the letters? 134: “I think I feel better if I kill him.” Shug gets her to sewing: “A needle instead of a razor in my hand.”
160 the real story of Pa and the family. “You must be sleep,” she writes to God.
Next one she writes to Nettie. And that leads into the next issue:
E.
Religion. 142 Olinka and roofleaf
and their religion. That crucial passage 175-179,
discussion with Shug. About God as old white guy vs. God as everywhere. The color purple. Duane Friesen’s reading of that passage,
171-172, maybe a way of softening
What
about religion as an issue in modern
What role does religion play in this book? What about “Pa’s” first statement/command to Celie? For him God is just another means of control, a means of maintaining his dominance and covering up his crimes and sins.
So
what is God worried about? Women getting jobs and
putting their children in day care? Gays and lesbians
and the right to pray to Jesus out loud in school? Killing the enemies
of
Religion in Color Purple.
“The Color Purple was
published in 1982. It received much attention and praise and was awarded
both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award that year.
|
The Color Purple is "a theological work examining the journey from the religious back to the spiritual." |
|
[The Color Purple] "is the pagan transformation of God from patriarchal male supremacist into trees, stars, wind and everything else. . .." |
|
[The Color Purple's] intent [is] to explore the difficult path of someone who starts out in life already a spiritual captive, but who, through her own courage and the help of others, breaks free into the realization that she, like Nature itself, is a radiant expression of the heretofore perceived as quite distant Divine." |
http://www.uwyo.edu/wch/bdpguidecp.htm
Duane
Friesen, Artists, Citizens, Philosophers: He notes the “linkage between personal
transformation and aesthetic delight” in Color
Purple (171). 172:
Look for next time: The crucial scene where Celie finally speaks up to Mr.
_________, his response, all that follows. Also, as I promised, we’ll come back
to the civil rights movement and talk about the connections between this book
and
Student Responses
Caroline Moons
Response
on “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
I found “The Color
Purple” a very interesting book First of all; it was a very different style of
writing then what I’m used to read. It was not written as a story told by one
author. The story was told through letters, written by the main character Celie
to God, and later her sister Nettie, who in turn wrote letters addressing
Celie. Also, the language spoken most of the time was a dialect of English. I
don’t know for sure if it was true Ebonics or not, but it sure reminded me of
it. In the very beginning I had a hard time reading the book in normal speed,
but before long I was used to Celie’s language and I
could read the book in fast pace. I had a hard time putting it down. Got sucked
into it!
Second, the book tells a story
of an oppressed woman who went through a lot. As a female, it was easy for me
to connect with most of Celie’s thoughts and
feelings. The story was emotionally engaging. Because of my compassion for
Celie, I was very happy the book ended the way it did. I believe that if it
would have ended differently I would have probably been pretty upset!
“The Color Purple” brought me
in touch with a world that I never knew, with problems that I never had to
worry about. Alice Walker does a marvelous job of showing the reader some of
the issues that are present in this world, and the feelings that go with it.
Media
After reading the book
“The Color Purple” were the main character Celie was oppressed primarily by her
father and later her husband, the following article grabbed my attention: “Wage
Gap Between Men and Women Shrinks” by David Leonhardt.
When I began to read the article I had a pretty positive feeling about it, but
after reading the first couple paragraphs I became frustrated more than
anything else. Why is it that there still is a wage gap between men and women?
They say it is shrinking now, and that is good, but there shouldn’t be a
difference in pay based on sex to begin with! Last year, females made 77.5
percent of what their male counterparts did, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. For every $1,000 a man earns, a woman only earns $775. That
difference becomes pretty large when bigger numbers are involved. Furthermore,
even though the headline of the article states that the gap is shrinking, in
the previous eight years the inequality in pay worsened slightly to 76 percent
in 2001 from 77.1 percent in 1993. I guess I just don’t understand why there is
this inequality. We all know it is wrong. Why don’t we just pay males and
females equally? “Economists say the two biggest reasons that the pay gap is
unlikely to wither completely are discrimination, which is difficult to
measure, and the dominant share of housework and child care done by women,
which reduces their outside job experience and causes them often to take more
flexible, lower-paid positions” (Leonhardt). Peleeeaassee, in today’s world ‘housework and child care’
SHOULD NOT be done dominantly by women and considering that females in the last
couple decades were part of the workforce more than ever, makes ‘the less
outside job experience’ a very weak argument! I say this is pure discrimination
and nothing else.
Link used: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/business/17WOME.html?th
The Color Purple has been
both interesting and repulsive to me as I have
read through it. I was looking forward to reading it, because
I had heard
so much about it. But as I got further into the story, I found
myself
wanting it to end as quickly as
possible. One thing that really kept me
reading, however, is the form in
which it is written. The letters were
short enough that I was able to
keep plodding through it. When the
letters
were coming from Nettie,
however, I almost gave up. I found her
letters
extremely difficult to read, not
because of style but because of content.
For some reason I really
didn't care what she was doing or what happened to
her, and I can't figure out
why. Maybe it was because she had not
been
mentioned for about half the
book. Another thing that was difficult
for me
was the concept of time. It was difficult to determine how much time
had
passed between each entry, and
that made some things difficult to piece
together. The last thing that bothered me was the way
everyone was sleeping
around and stealing everyone
else's man/woman. All of the main female
characters had been with at least two
men (or women) except for Nettie. One
of the interesting things in
this book, however, was the control the women
had. When they decided something, there was
nothing the men could do to
stop them. They left and married other people, and then
came back and were,
for the most part, accepted
back into the family. By the end of the
book,
everyone was reunited at Celie's house, and everyone seemed to be happy that
everyone was there.
I found these two websites
that agreed that the longer we wait to take
action or make a decision the worse
things are going to be.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-babbin021403.asp
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030303&s=schell
Perry Leatherman
Response #3
I really enjoy reading the book The Color Purple. The book’s letterform makes it very easy and
quick to read. There are so many
surprises in this book. From the shocking
beginning, to the secrets that Celie reveals throughout the book. Celie goes through so much in her life. From being raped by her step father, to being
beaten by her husband, finding out that her children are alive and living with
her sister, Nettie in
I think the letters that Celie receives from Nettie are very
interesting. It showed that African
Americans didn’t really have a place in the world. They were not accepted in the
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,78768,00.html
This article is about the restoration of the death penalty
in
While reading the novel
Color Purple I found myself upset because the way
Celie didn't give Mr. ____ a
name. I thought about this for a long
time and
came to the conclusion that she
didn't give him a name because she had no
feelings for him and if she gave him
a name and recognized him as human then
she would have feelings for
him. Now that we are almost finished
with the
book I really have to say that I
thoroughly enjoyed reading it because of
all of the things that go on in
the book. I really like the book now
because Celie is really starting to
come out of her shell and finding out
who she really is this makes me
really happy for her, because out of any one
in this book she deserves
happiness. When Celie started to stand p
for
herself I really started becoming
happy because Mr. ____her terribly and
didn't deserve her I think that
the things that her put her through were
just horrible and that he should
be punished for. Thats why i really liked
the part when Celie was writing
to her sister and she was talking to Mr.
_____ and
was telling him that it was all going to come back to him some
day.
http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/story?id=1506736
While searching around the
web I was trying to find an issue related to the
book we were reading, so I went
to the first place I new i would find one.
Surprisingly it was at
ESPN.com I found an article on the controversy on
whether or not women should be
allowed to join the all male club at
National
Golf Course. This article is about planned protests at this years
masters tournament. I am a huge golf fan and feel that women
should be
allowed to join the club. I think this way because if they join it does
not
take away any of the prestige
that the course has built up over the years.
If anything it will make the
course a more popular and make more money.
There are many people
involved with this matter that are not just golfers.
Some senators are taking
away memberships because they want to stay popular
with their constituints
and the most feminist of all Martha Burke.
She is
leading this campaign, I feel that
the change needs to be made, but some of
Ms. Burkes
antics are wrong.
Adam Meekhof
When I first go to the
section with all the letters from Nettie to Celie, I couldn't really get into
them. I couldn't,
still don't, understand why those letters were in there. Once I got into the letters I found them
rather intresting, and enjoyable. It is hard for me to imagine growing up, and
not ever having some type of education outside of house work, like how the
little girls in the village lived. I
also cannot imagine being a young child, and already be "given" to
someone who was middle-aged for marriage.
It blows my mind. I found it
hard to imagine not choosing if I marry, let alone who I marry (when Celie is
given to Mr. Blank.) Reading those types
of things in the story really made me think of how lucky I am, to live where
and when I do. I realize that being the
dominate race has some bearing on how I'm viewed as a woman, but even while in
Africa Nettie saw the dominate culture 'giving' their children away for
marriage.
------------------------
The article is about all the
snow that
Laura Prickett
After reading the majority of this book the main thing that
amazes me is how much stronger Celie how become. I think physically she has
grown into a totally different person. One example is how she starts to wear
pants, which at the time was a very big deal. The other obvious step is that
Celie is moving to
I am so amazed through out the book when Nettie is describing
how beautiful and amazing
Overall I think this is a piece of literature well worth reading. In class we discussed if it was outdated and I have to say I do not think so. At one point in class we said that the same things happen just not to the extreme and I disagree with that. Everyday women and children are maliciously beaten and raped and often by family members for no reason. So what is the difference? I think this is a timeless story because it basically talks about women learning to overcome the suppression that they face.
I read an article in the Washington Post title
“21 Killed in Panic to Exit Chicago Club” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22631-2003Feb17.html.
This was an article about the 21 people who were killed in a
Andrea Lehman
After reading almost half of this book I am still amazed
by the content in this book. Not that I am so nieve
that I think bad things never happen but I think this book really brings to
life, very explicitly, the trials of life, however difficult they are. I will
say that I would never read a book like this on my own, I much prefer the
poetry of Robert Frost, which I must say is slightly more
light hearted than the material in this book. However, I must say that I
do find that this book has some unique insights into the psychological aspects
of Celie’s traumatic life. The most terrible thing is
that she is raped by her Father and gets pregnant which forever alters her
feelings toward men and their behavior. She seems to become completely numb to
the fact that there are just some things that should not occur in a marriage
but since that is what she has always known she honestly believes that nothing
is wrong. I think that this single act forever changes they way she thinks not
only about marriage but also about herself as well. That is until Shug Avery
arrives. Their first encounter is not as glamorous as Celie would have liked
because Shug tells her that she is ugly. However, after this somewhat
interesting beginning, they strike up a very odd friendship. Celie then claims
to have fallen in love with her which shows that she is turning to any place
available to find someone to love her because she has never experienced it before.
I find this book difficult to read mainly because
thankfully I have never experienced anything close to what Celie has. I was
raised in a home with two loving parents and everything I needed whereas Celie
has absolutely nothing, even her own Father betrayed her.
http://www.theonion.com/onion3905/kids_excited.html
This particular page of the onion amused me somewhat
because I am just baffled that they wrote about something like this. I do
realize that this website is known for being controversial but I think that a
story like this somewhat takes away from their credibility as a news source.
Jenny Lehman