Alice Walker Blog

The Color Purple is introduced with an innocent and confused Celie writing an earnest letter humbly begun with “Dear God.” She then continues to confess all her problems to the only figure, other than her sister, who cares about her. This pattern of letters to God continues throughout the novel and is the exclusive narrator throughout the story. This type of narrator technique bestows the title “epistolary novel” upon the book, the word epistolary deriving from the Latin word for letters.
Alice Walker, the author, or “medium” as she refers to herself in the concluding notes of the novel, effectively employs this technique to create a relationship between the reader and the characters. The Color Purple is an intimate and often gruesome reading for how much you are revealed about the character’s lives and tragedies, especially for Celie, the author of the letters. The result is a powerful and gripping story extorting domestic violence, racism, and the enormous class differences of the time. Immediately from the beginning you are made aware of Celie being of a rape victim of her own believed “Pa.” This narration also lets you closely observe Celie’s consistent building of strength as a woman, and growing love for Shug. No moment could be more emotionally convicting than the final letter is addressed to basically anyone who listens and details the moment she gets to see her beloved Netty and two lost children. It is a fulfilling conclusion for a novel that at times was so intense it almost demanded to be put down.
There are disadvantages to this type of novel. There can be large and confusing gaps in narrative when large spans of time pass between letters. You also have to rely on the communication between the narrator and the other characters exclusively in the development of the characters. It is hard to say that there are many flaws in the execution of this style in The Color Purple however. Alice Walker masters this technique and subtly, but effectively, develops nearly a dozen separate characters. The gaps in narration are seamlessly woven to allow enough time and events to occur between letters that the story moves quickly through time and but is a captivating, eventful, and well-paced read. Towards the end of the novel Walker allows Nettie to become a separate narrator, completely oblivious to Celie’s life at home, and relay a dire message about the demise of their “Mother” continent. We then see Nettie and Celie both send letters to each other and realize they are slowly, with God’s help, getting closer to becoming reunited. I believe Walker decided to use this technique because she realized the realism that immediately snags the reader in. I also believed this point of view could help her better show a strong woman developing, because strong women have been a consistent theme in Walker’s life, from her literary devotion to Hurston, her righting, and her activism today. The ability to expertly craft a novel in this tricky form immediately qualifies Walker as one of the great American, auth