A Study in Mediocrity

     My most recent literary conquest--well, as it relates to school--is the novel I Am The Messenger, by Markus Zusak. Messenger begins with Ed Kennedy, underage cab driver and a study in mediocrity, and his explanation of his life so far. Well, actually it begins with a bank robbery, which he thwarts completely by accident, but after that it goes straight to his normal life. It's written in the first person, and from the start Ed makes it clear that he is not someone interesting things happen to, apart from this bank robbery business. That is, nothing interesting happens to him until soon afterward, when he receives the first ace in the mail. On it there are three addresses. At each of them, he has a task to perform.
    Now, I've previously mentioned one of the things I love about this book: the characterization present in the narration. Obviously some character is going to seep through, because it's a first-person novel, but there are plenty of authors who barely make it that far. Many either write in their own voice, or choose similar narrators in all of their books so they don't have to adapt too much. Zusak is different; the way the book is narrated is directly tied to Ed's perception of the world. Short paragraphs. Generally limited physical descriptions. Occasional dips into more descriptive language, but only if it's something Ed really cares about, like his dog, or Audrey (who is not his girlfriend, although this is not a fact he enjoys). I might not have noticed this if it had been the first book of Zusak's I had read, but this is not the case; I have also read and enjoyed The Book Thief, which takes place in Nazi Germany and tells of Liesel Meminger's life on Himmel Street (and, as you may have guessed, literary thievery). This book is also written in the first person, but not from the point of view of the protagonist, at least partly because she is a child at the time and can't make certain judgements which are necessary. The narrator is, instead, Death, who is weary of his job and tells the story of the book thief mostly because she interests him.
    Death's narration is very different from Ed's. He provides much longer paragraphs, more description. He is very reflective, understandably a bit morbid, and he tends to read more into things than Ed does. As an example, let's take Messenger's description of its protagonist--that is, Ed's physical description of himself:

"I have dark hair, half-tanned skin, coffee brown eyes. My muscles are hugely normal. I should stand straighter, but I don't. I stand with my hands in my pockets. My boots are falling apart, but I still wear them because I love and cherish them." (20)

And The Book Thief's protagonist:

"Upon her arrival, you could still see the bite marks of snow on her hands and the frosty blood on her fingers. Everything about her was undernourished. Wirelike shins. Coat hanger arms. She did not produce it easily, but when it came, she had a starving smile.
Her hair was a close enough brand of German blond, but she had dangerous eyes. Dark brown. You didn't really want brown eyes in Germany around that time. Perhaps she received them from her father, but she had no way of knowing, as she couldn't remember him." (31)

Quite a contrast, is it not? Another interesting observation: The Book Thief's narration continues in the same style, because Death, having existed for millenia, is a static character. Messenger's narration develops somewhat over the course of the novel. It's all still in Ed's voice, of course, but his perception of the world is changing, and it shows. He goes into a bit more detail about some tings; not a lot, but enough. He also begins to make observations about his and his friends' attitude toward life. At one point, he says, "[...] we don't give it a lot more thought. I guess we don't give many things a lot of thought." (217) Ed realizes that he's become complacent; he doesn't really want to be a mediocre underage cab driver for the rest of his life, but he's not ambitious enough to change it, and he sees that his friends are much the same way. This last observation becomes even more important when the last ace arrives...but that would be telling.
    There's another detail that I suppose counts as a difference, which is really quite fantastic if you like that sort of thing. Throughout the story Ed's work to fulfill the aces is generally aided by others, some of whom are a bit surly about it, who tell him somebody else gave them instructions to do what they're doing--and they don't know who's giving them the instructions. Of course, Ed doesn't know where his instructions are coming from either, and he notices the parallel. But where this really gets interesting is toward the end. Ed comes home to find a stranger sitting on his couch. The stranger is described briefly: "He has fairly short brown hair, stands a bit smaller than medium height, and wears a shirt, black jeans, and blue athletic shoes." (352)
    In case you can't already see where this is going, I present you with a picture of Markus Zusak (click for a link to its source):

     The stranger then gives Ed the following speech:

"I killed your father, Ed. I organized the bungled bank robbery for a time when you were there. I instructed that man to brutalize his wife [...] I did it all to you. I made you a less-than-competent taxi driver and got you to do all those things you thought you couldn't." (353)

Fine and dandy, you say. This guy's put Ed through a lot of crap, but so what? Well, first of all, there's the thing about making Ed what he is. It's implied that the guy is pretty young, but in order to have influenced Ed's life that much, he would have had to be an adult when Ed was a kid, or possibly even when he was born. Most striking, however, is the statement that he killed Ed's father. Pretty early in the book (page 19), Ed states that his father essentially drank himself to death; he died when his liver gave out. So the statement that this man killed Ed's father makes no sense.
     Unless...
     One more thing. After telling Ed why all this stuff has happened, the stranger gives Ed a folder. In it, written down, is everything that's happened so far in the book. Including the exact conversation that they're currently having.
    There are a couple of other indicators, after what I've told you, but I think I've already given away enough. Read I Am the Messenger yourself--it's definitely worth reading--if you want to know exactly how this all plays out.
     It's marvelous.

Reading Too Much Into Narration

Currently I am reading I Am The Messenger, a novel by Markus Zusak. I have read only one other book of his, The Book Thief, which takes place in Nazi Germany and tells the story of a girl who steals books (and, at one point, helps hide a Jew in the cellar). Clearly the two books are significantly different: Messenger is a bout the strange turn Ed Kennedy's mediocre life takes when he finds the ace of diamonds in his mailbox and follows the instructions written on it. The books are equally well-written, but the style and tone differ greatly between them, although sometimes for obvious reasons. The Book Thief has considerable overtones of death because of the setting, particularly in the second half, and many of the later lighthearted moments are full of the knowledge that they could end at any time. Messenger is altogether a less serious book; it has several serious events, but the humour in this book is much more common than in the other. Additionally, more of the serious events in the latter book have positive effects.

The changes in style between the two books, however, are quite notable. When reading The Book Thief, I had thought that it was simply written in the author's usual way. The narration was littered with moments of grimness and reflection, and contained amounts of visual description considered standard for most literature. Messenger has a style inconsistent with that of the other book. Physical description is less specific; the appearances of characters and objects are explained in broad strokes, like Ed's house, which is a "shack", or his friend Ritchie, who has a "man-boyish face". Some characters, like Marv, don't get any physical description and little of any other kind expositionally, despite importance to the story. The largest block of description of a person, apart from Ed's outline of his own character, is this:

"Audrey always sits opposite me, no matter where we play [cards]. She has yellow hair, wiry legs, the most beautiful crooked smile in the world, and lovely hips, and she watches a lot of movies." (15)

Compare that to The Book Thief's Liesel Meminger on her arrival on Himmel Street:

"Upon her arrival, you could still see the bite marks of snow on her hands and the frosty blood on her fingers. Everything about her was undernourished. Wirelike shins. Coat hanger arms. She did not produce it easily, but when it came, she had a starving smile.
Her hair was a close enough brand of German blond, but she had dangerous eyes. Dark brown. You didn't really want brown eyes in Germany around that time. Perhaps she received them from her father, but she had no way of knowing, as she couldn't remember him." (31)

Quite a contrast. The reason for this may seem unclear at first, because the narrator of The Book Thief is rarely present at events and easily forgotten. Both books are written in the first person; The Book Thief is narrated by Death himself, Messenger by Ed. Before I continue, I must tell you that I have read many first-person books where the style of narration was standard for the author, not specific to the character--or multiple books by one person where the author always chose the same kind of person to narrate. Zusak's books are different. They are told by very different people, recording the impressions of the character rather than the author--and, most importantly, characterize greatly with a thing as simple as how a person is described. Death, with good reason, sees a lot of things with the overtones of doom that serve as a constant undercurrent to his book. He does a lot of thinking in general, reflects on events and implications with great frequency and depth, and this is the way he talks about everything. Ed, on the other hand, doesn't really look deeply into things. Most of his description is surface impressions; the most in-depth description is of Audrey, who he later admits he's in (unreciprocated) love with, and even his discussion of his own character is fairly superficial. He accepts that his life is mediocre and unremarkable, he assumes that this will not change in the future, and he lives his life accordingly. He is, usually, a passive kind of person.

Of course, at this point I am only halfway into the book, and I do not know that this state of affairs will continue. Ed's life becomes much more interesting when the first ace shows up in the mail, disrupting his pleasantly average existence. Perhaps as the book continues and he follows the instructions on all the aces, his observations of his surroundings will gain more depth. But even without certainty of this happening, it remains clear that Zusak tailors his writing to the views of his characters to a greater degree than is usually seen.

Collectively Unfortunate Impressions

(My writing may sound slightly "off" in this post; I apologize.)

As the reader may or may not be aware, the vignettes that I posted were part of a project assigned to my entire class, though I was one of the few who chose to write fiction. Looking over those vignettes posted by my classmates, I notice a recurring theme: events that were painful, in both the physical and emotional senses. I think I understand the reason for this, actually; the discussion of pain both helps to alleviate it in itself, and allows for commiseration, which also helps. (It also makes for a depressing read in some instances, but let's not go into that.) I take as my first example a vignette by Kathryn Douglas:

"Then my best friend Lex, wasn’t my best friend anymore either. We got into an argument cuz she thought I’d be a good idea to make me jealous of her, but it didn’t turn out too well. They made fun of me, really made me feel like nothing."

Losing friends is an experience common to, I would think, all people, though to avoid making a generalization I'll go with "most". It is generally agreed that said experience is not a pleasant one. Rare is the friendship that drifts apart peacefully; it is more common for them to end in screaming fights, or mockery like that mentioned above. I hesitate to use the word "traumatizing", because it is a rather strong term, but it is definite that the end of a friendship is a painful event. It is also one that tends to imprint itself on one's memory, making it easier to weave a story out of, although this may or may not be a positive thing. An event that might be likened to this one, though the similarities may not be obvious at first, is detailed in Ebone Qualls's first vignette. There she discusses the death of her cousin from cancer, due to that part of the family's rejection of standard cancer treatments. It may seem a bit callous to say that losing a friend through taunts is similar to the death of a relative from cancer, but the labels are in fact only surface identification. The resultant pain of the events is actually quite similar, in that it comes from losing someone close to the author of the vignette.

To further demonstrate my point, let us take a look at the more physical side. The following excerpt comes from the blog of Tony Lin.

"I heard a loud snap, and a second later, I felt like I was just shot with a gun [...] The pain was unbearable it felt as if someone was taking a nail and hammering it into my femur. My leg was throbbing and that wasn’t the worst part."

This, again, is a very memorable event; pain tends to leave an impression which often leads to very detailed memories of events surrounding it. That is probably another reason for this recurring theme; everyone has experienced some sort of pain at some point in their lives. This last example is not greatly similar to the first two, since it does not really point out a loss, apart from a temporary loss of functionality in the aforementioned limb. However, it deserves mention as a demonstration of the general theme of pain going on here.

Another, similar theme, which I have not gone into such detail on, is fear. There is a relationship between pain and fear, not just because they tend to occur close together. They are both extremely memorable, of course, and serve as good sources of anecdotes. In addition to this, fear, like pain, often becomes less of a problem when it can be shared. It doesn't just go away, of course, but at least it gets a little better.

And thus concludes my shoddy analysis.

A Farewell to Mangoes

    The House on Mango Street ends on a hopeful note, with Esperanza saying that though she will leave, she will return someday to help those she left behind. Some interesting ideas about her meaning have arisen, including that the book itself is meant to help those still stuck on Mango Street, and I have to say that it sounds plausible. Partly, of course, there's the fact that she talks about writing poetry, and in combination with the writing style it's easy to see it as a collection of events Esperanza recorded while living on Mango Street, later to share them with the world. And there are also hints (or sometimes more than hints) of her views on the social constraints that exist on this street, and probably elsewhere. Readers (you know, all two of you), I put it to you that this book is indeed what Esperanza has given to help those who cannot leave Mango Street, and to change the unfair social "rules" which still control lives there.
    One of the better examples of this is the very brief vignette "Those Who Don't". It deals with unfair racial distinctions and the irrational fear many people have of "a neighborhood of another color". These fears work both ways:

"Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we're dangerous [...] All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight [...] That is how it goes and goes." (28)

Esperanza notices how every race seems to be afraid of every other, how they don't understand others and don't try to. She speaks of it as a cycle, because neither group tries to understand the other (if there were only two, which there aren't, but that's not the point), and this allows the fear to continue; she also seems to realize that there isn't any reason for this to continue. The vignette explains that the people who are afraid of Esperanza's neighborhood are "stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake", and while it's never said directly, the implication seems to be that the people in her own neighborhood who are afraid of others are being just as narrow-minded. If the book is indeed her gift to the people of Mango Street, her intention may be to open their minds to the fact that people of other races should not automatically be seen as dangerous.
    Earlier, in the very first vignette, Esperanza speaks of a previous home and how, when she pointed it out to a passing nun from her school, the nun reacted with obvious distaste; this was because the flat looked even from the outside like an undesirable place, due to a lack of money. Later, in "A Rice Sandwich", Esperanza tells the story of the one occasion when she ate lunch in the canteen at school. The school's Sister Superior says that Esperanza doesn't live far enough away from the school to need to eat in the canteen, and then goes to the window and points out "a row of ugly three-flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into" (45) with the guess that Esperanza lives there. These events, and others in the book, indicate a general contempt for poverty exhibited by many secondary characters. Perhaps this is another issue Esperanza aims to change with her writings? It wouldn't be possible to eliminate the poverty itself, not with a book, but at least people will not automatically look down on those with less money.
    And how can we be sure that Esperanza intends this book to help those still on Mango Street? By the way she describes her first encounter with this idea. It arises in "The Three Sisters", where one of the title characters speaks to Esperanza about her desire to leave:

"When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are." (105)

If the book is indeed Esperanza's message for those she leaves behind, this is her clue to those who read it. By including the message given to her by the mysterious sister, she is effectively saying: No, I have not forgotten who I am. I have remembered Mango Street, and I will come back for the ones I left behind. This, along with the final vignette, cements the theory that The House on Mango Street is what she offers those who "cannot out".
    Of course, we know that Esperanza is herself fictional and technically cannot write a book, but many books are written with clear indication that they are intended to be seen as the character's writings; third-person books sometimes do this too. It gives the reader more concrete ideas about events after the book. Perhaps Esperanza, like Alicia, attended university; perhaps she became the one who is beautiful and cruel, and her stories are meant to teach others to do the same. It's certainly a nice thought.

Tortillas Are Not Empowering

    Sandra Cisneros clearly acknowledges that boys and girls are often raised differently, but she indicates that they shouldn't be, or that the differences shouldn't be what they are. Her characters tend to speak of marriage as a goal of sorts (26), as if it is the only way to escape their current lives; from other vignettes it appears that the girls are raised to think this way, so that their only ambition is marriage. This is demonstrated on page 31:

"A woman's place is sleeping so she can wake up early with the tortilla star [...] Alicia, whose mama died, is sorry there is no one older to rise and make the lunchbox tortillas."

The statement about a woman's place seems to come at least in part from Alicia's father; Alicia is a university student, pursuing this path because she does not want to be limited to taking care of her family for the rest of her life. She is given the responsibility of making the tortillas because her mother is no longer around to do it, and her father probably leaves it to her because he considers it women's work. Her father also disapproves of her life as a student, presumably because it means she will spend less time doing the things women are "supposed" to do, and that she has ambitions apart from getting married. The implication is that a boy in that situation would not be disapproved of, that the choice to attend university would then show initiative. Cisneros's tone in the vignette indicates that she finds this double standard unfair, that at least this differentiation between the genders should not stand.
    In the vignette "Beautiful & Cruel", Esperanza (Cisneros's protagonist) refers to marriage as "the ball and chain" and talks about a common female character in movies who is "beautiful and cruel". This woman is in control of what power she has, and uses it to maintain her independence from men without barring them from her life completely. But more telling are the words Esperanza uses to summarize her goal to be this type of woman:

"I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate." (89)

More than any other words in this vignette, this sentence speaks of the gender roles imposed on Esperanza and others like her. It is expected, or even required, that a woman clean up after herself--perhaps in more places than just the table mentioned here--but a man is actually expected not to do this. Therefore, if Esperanza leaves the table without cleaning up after herself, she is behaving "like a man". Does Cisneros approve of this distinction? It appears that she doesn't; her protagonist certainly ignores it, anyway, at least to the point of not obeying it, although it remains present enough for her to feel that it's worth mentioning. Esperanza is shown to find many of the imposed gender roles of her society unfair, both here and in other vignettes; while a character that serves simply as a mouthpiece for one's views usually seems more flat than Esperanza, it is unlikely that Cisneros is not in at least some agreement. After all, it's quite a challenge to write from the point of view of someone who thinks completely differently from oneself.
    It's quite clear that Sandra Cisneros does not think that boys and girls should not be rised differently, at least not in the ways outlined in the vignettes. The only question remaining is, do you?

Daughter of Alnia

Contents
1........................................Castles
2.....................Backwards Quellen
3...The Vest of Feliciano Montgard
4...............................Jester's Mule

Windows

    In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros seems to use windows to represent lonely people; the idea is that these people just sit and stare out the window, perhaps wishing for a different life. The first shows up in "My Name", on page 11, when Esperanza talks about her great-grandmother:

"She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow."

In the text beforehand, she mentions that her great-grandfather forced her aforementioned great-grandmother to marry him, against her will, and that she never forgave him. It would appear, then, that here the window symbolizes the great-grandmother wishing she had not married, still angry at having been torn from her previous life. She longs for the way she used to live. Much the same thing is shown in "No Speak English":

"She sits all day by the window and plays the Spanish radio show and sings all the homesick songs about her country [...]" (77)

Much like Esperanza's great-grandmother, Mamacita (the "she" in this passage) is being kept away from the life she used to live--in this case, presumably in Mexico. The many ways she shows her desire to return to her old life are detailed in the vignette: how she refuses to learn English, how she never comes downstairs,  how she misses the house she used to live in. It upsets her when her younger child speaks English, even when it is only a Pepsi commercial, because it makes her even more isolated from the people around her. She does not belong, and so she stares wistfully out the window.
    Finally, there is Rafaela. She, too, stares out the window and wishes for something different, something better:

"Rafaela leans out the window [...] and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel's. On the corner there is music from the bar, and [she] wishes she could go there and dance [...]" (79)

From the surrounding text, it is clear that Rafaela's husband does not let her leave the house, perhaps out of the fear that she will not come back. She asks the children who hang around nearby to get her things from the store because she cannot go there herself. The mention of dreaming that her hair is like Rapunzel's also shows her desire to escape; if her hair were indeed as long as Rapunzel's perhaps someone would climb up it to rescue her. She is trapped, unable to do what she wants, like the other two women who sit and stare out the window. The windows show that these women want to escape the lives they lead, controlled by men as they are, and also that it seems impossible to escape.

The Color Purple

            Alice Walker’s epistolary novel The Color Purple tells the story of two sisters, Celie and Nettie, who are separated by the unfortunate circumstances of their lives and do not meet again for many years. Celie is forced to marry Albert (referred to for much of the book as Mr___), who views her as a lesser being and treats her like a servant; later, Celie meets Shug Avery, the woman Albert actually wanted to marry, and the two become first friends and then lovers. Nettie, on the other hand, flees their abusive father and becomes a missionary in Africa after becoming friends with a woman named Corinne; by some chance, Corinne is raising Celie’s children, who were taken from Celie after her father got her pregnant. Throughout their lives, the two sisters go through many changes in their perspectives on religion which eventually lead to the same ideas, as well as experiencing similar forms of gender inequality, though they react to it differently.

            Based upon the different directions their lives take, it is apparent that Celie and Nettie begin with different views of God. Celie’s letters to God are written in the tone of a journal or diary. She seems to think of God as a confidante, perhaps with the idea that he is the only one who will listen to her problems. There is a point where she recounts a conversation with Nettie about Celie living with Albert (Mr ___), noting: “I just say, Never mine, never mine, long as I can spell G-o-d I got somebody along.” (17) It is clear that confiding in God helps Celie deal with what is happening to her. On the other hand, it seems probable that Nettie’s concept of God is different; based on the fact that she becomes a missionary and on some of her own statements, it appears that she views God more distantly. Although her situation at the start of the book is in many ways as bad as her sister’s, she never writes letters to God or any other such entity. Later on she mentions prayer, but this seems to be a more remote form of communication. This may have something to do with Nettie’s continued belief, while Celie goes through a second stage of religious development: the idea that there is no God at all. After Celie finds out that the man she knew as her father is not really, and learns the truth about her parents, she goes through a period of doubting God’s existence or willingness to help her. This is not thoroughly covered in her letters apart from her explanation of it to Shug, but it still clearly occurs. But Nettie, who watches the destruction of the Olinka people’s way of life, never stops believing in God. This may stem from her conception of him: because she sees God as a more distant figure, she does not blame him for the actions of selfish humans as Celie seems to.

The final view that both of them reach, however, is the same. There is no great detail in Nettie’s description of her changing viewpoint, only a brief description of the realization both she and Celie eventually reach:

“God is different to us now, after all these years in Africa. More spirit than ever before, and more internal. Most people think he has to look like something or someone—a roofleaf or Christ—but we don’t. And not being tied to what God looks like, frees us.” (257)

This is a more eloquent summary of the understanding of God that Celie also comes to—that God has no specific shape or appearance. It is in everything in some way, a spirit that infuses everything rather than a being that controls it. The fundamental reason for God’s creation of things, as explained by Shug to Celie, is that it, like everything else, wants to be loved. This version of God appeals to the sisters possibly because both of them have been in situations where they, too, wanted to be loved: Celie for most of her life before meeting Shug, and Nettie to some extent when Corinne is suspicious of her husband Samuel’s interactions with Nettie.

            Both sisters also have experience with sexism, but they have encountered and responded to it in different ways. Celie, in fact, has dealt with it from the beginning: she is treated much like an object by the man she knows as her father, first sexually abused and then sent off to live with Albert in a way much reminiscent of someone trying to sell something. It is clear from what she records of people’s words that the men she knows treat their wives like property, just there to follow instructions. Albert, relatively early in the book, even states that he beats Celie just because she is his wife. Nettie’s experiences of this mentality occur in Africa rather than America, but in some ways what she sees is much the same. To begin with, of course, she also lives with their “father”, and witnesses his abuse of Celie; she has a similar incident with Albert but responds by fighting back, which leads to her being forced to leave his house. The following years, for Nettie, are not as rife with sexism as her sister’s, and Samuel seems to see her as an equal. It is only in Africa that she observes the same gender inequality Celie has been living with all along:

“[The men] listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don’t even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground…[for the women] to ‘look in a man’s face’ is a brazen thing to do.” (162)

Among the Olinka as well as the people in the sisters’ hometown, the women are thought of and taught to think of themselves as inferior. The men assume that what women have to say is generally of little importance, and that they exist only to be ordered around. Female children in the Olinka village are not even allowed to go to school, due to the assumption that they will never use that education. In fact, this is another link to Celie’s experiences, as Celie is not allowed to go to school following her first pregnancy. It is clearly demonstrated that sexism is much the same for both sisters.

            Although they see the same patterns in gender inequality, Celie and Nettie do not react to it in the same way. Celie first becomes extremely subdued, rarely speaking to anyone apart from her sister—at least partly because so many of the people in her life are men. After meeting Shug, Celie discovers her own lesbian feelings, and though it is not entirely certain, it seems that this may be partially influenced by her negative experiences with men. This is most clearly demonstrated by Celie’s response to being asked whether she dislikes Albert just because he is a man: “Take off they pants, I say, and men look like frogs to me. No matter how you kiss ’em, as far as I’m concern, frogs is what they stay.” (254) It becomes obvious, after this exchange and a later conversation on the same subject, that Celie will never be happy in a relationship with a man; of course, this is also clear in her interactions with Shug. But Nettie does not feel the same way, despite having experienced the same kind of sexism her sister has. Quite apart from being lesbian, Celie has a dislike for all men, but Nettie clearly does not make the same immediate judgment; she even marries Samuel after Corinne’s death. This may be because Nettie has not dealt with gender inequality as directly as Celie. She has merely observed it from the outside, without it being applied to her most of the time; her life is not defined by male supremacy as her sister’s is. Divergent experiences lead to unlike reactions and assumptions.

Even as their lives follow completely different courses, Celie and Nettie manage to draw the same conclusions about religion and God; they also see much the same kind of gender inequality, though Celie is more directly affected, which is probably why the sisters respond so differently. Nettie begins with a more distant view of God than her sister seems to have, but like Celie, she eventually comes to the realization that God has no set appearance and is in everything. Celie is a victim of sexism many times over, while Nettie only views it from the outside, and as a result Celie hates men while Nettie does not. Alice Walker’s point in creating these characters, therefore, seems to be at least partly in favor of fighting against gender inequality; Nettie fights from the beginning and her life is presented as being better, while Celie remains submissive until she leaves Albert’s house with Shug, at which point her life improves but not to the level of her sister’s. Celie and Nettie themselves, as characters, are simply products of their experiences and cannot be judged as anything else.

Letters to God

    In the novel The Color Purple, the protagonist Celie's letters to God make it clear that she is a religious person, but it also shows something about the way she sees God. It would seem that she thinks of God as someone to whom she can tell all her problems without too much judgment, perhaps someone to confide in. As the book goes on her letters begin to sound more and more like a diary, or maybe just letters to a friend. However, in her first letter, Celie writes, "Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me." In this instance, it is clear that she is addressing the God who would be the recipient of her letter, were she able to send it. Perhaps, as the story continues, her faith in God becomes secondary to her belief in what is happening now. In the beginning her letters are also much shorter--brief confidences, or confessions; it is difficult to tell sometimes why she writes things down. As she continues, the letters get longer, and it seems more as though she is telling the story of her life. It is as if she thinks of God as the only friend she has, or the only person who would care enough to listen.
    As I have mentioned, the letters mainly seem to record the goings-on of Celie's life, with particular attention to things out of the ordinary. There are several different potential reasons for her doing this.  Maybe she wants to keep a record of important events in her life so she can look back on it later on; she may not want to forget anything, and the best way she can think of to remember is by writing everything down. Or, based on the aforementioned sentence from the first letter, maybe she is going through a confusing time as compared to her life before the letters. In this case, she would be writing things down to more easily process them, to help her get a better understanding of what is going on. This seems somewhat more likely, as she mainly records those events which break her regular routine; many of them she seems to be confused about, or uncertain, and perhaps she needs to work out her feelings on paper. This would explain why none of the letters are dated.
    Another possible reason for her letter-writing may be related to Celie's sister, Nettie. In her eighth letter, Celie writes, "I know I'm not as pretty or as smart as Nettie, but she say I ain't dumb." Celie goes on to explain how her sister tried to teach her things she was learning at school after Celie herself was taken out of school by her father. So it's possible that Celie is also writing things down because she wants to improve her writing. She might see this as learning something (which it is), and because her sister is no longer present to teach her things, she wants to find some way to teach herself.