Color Purple Essay !!!

Justice Toailoa

Engllish Period2 

1/24/11                  

                   In the book The Color Purple there are two characters Nettie and Celie who are sister that go through a journey of becoming women. Although they go through the same tragedies they both manage to take to different paths. For example, Celie is forced to take a path that she doesn’t exactly agree with and she develops a thought about men that very much differs from Nettie’s point of view. Celie states “I look at women,tho, cause I’m not scared of them.”(pg5). As you can see Celie looks at women different from men because she isn’t as scared of women like she is of men. She manages to create this thought about men from the experiences she has had with her Pa and being sexually abused. Unlike Nettie who is given more options to make her own decisions which she develops a mind of independence. She learns to stand on her own and how to not be afraid of men.

                  Another example of how Nettie and Celie have a different mind set is when Nettie tries to get Celie to realize that she has power and that she has to start using it. Nettie tries to get Celie to understand that she doesn’t have to take the abuse that she does, but Celie continues to silence her voice and to let Mr._____and his kids ron all over her. Celie says “Don’t let them run over you, Netter say. You got to let them know who got the upper hand”(pg17). Here we can see that Nettie is trying to tell Celie how to have her own voice. When she talks about having the upper hand she know well that a women can have a power and not only that, but have even more power than a man. It’s just a matter of whether or not Celie can find the courage to have the power.

                  The other way of how Celie sees women and men different and how Nettie sees them different is when Celie is now Mr._____‘s wife. Also when Nettie is in Africa with the Olinka. They both now are on two completely different paths. Like when Celie says “I say to myself Celie, you a tree. That’s how come I know trees fear men.”(pg17). You see that Celie compares herself to a tree because she believe that trees fear men. She fears Mr._____because she let’s him take control of her instead of showing him who does the real hard work. She still has that mind set of not having her own voice and not being able to stand up for her self. Unlike Nettie how she has a strong independent mind that just wants to be just as equal as men and does everything she can to achieve that apportunity. So when she sees that Celie doesn’t have that same desire she doesn’t exactly understand why. For example when she says “The Olinka do not believe girls should be educated”(157). Here you can see that he doesn’t understand why the Olinka treat their men different then their women and why they see men more dominant than women. So you can that Nettie and Celie have two completely different paths that they have chosen to take and continue to take.