THE COLOR PURPLE VS.

BELOVED

Tricia Kerlin

BEL OVED BY: TO NI M OR RISO N

This Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece is a story about a former slave named Sethe who suffers from violence, slavery, racism and rape.

Known as one of Toni Morrison’s greatest pieces of writing.

THE CO L OR PU RPL E BY: AL ICE WALK ER

The book begins with a 14 year old black woman named Celie who is being raped and abused by her father. When she is older she becomes someone who isn’t happy until she meets Shug who helps her find her independence and voice. Throughout the entire book Celie meets other amazing women. They all join together and discover themselves and their own strengths to overcome the unhappy lives they were living.

MAJOR THEMES

The power of the past

Feminism brought to life

VS.

THESIS

The Color Purple and Beloved are two books that go hand in hand with each other by both encompassing the suffrage of black woman and their struggle to overcome discrimination.

“THE T IMES THEY AR E A - CHANGIN’ ”

Bob Dylan’s song as we discussed earlier in the semester looks at a new future with different outlooks.

• New generations, new customs. • Out with older ways of thinking • “The order is Rapidly fadin'” (lines

51-52).

COMING TOGETHER

Both Beloved and The Color Purple are books with women who are fierce and not willing to let people walk all over them. Behavior by women of this kind was not popular before this time period.

• “Miss Millie finger the children more, look at Sofia…she say would you like to work for me, be my maid? Sofia say, Hell no. She say, What you say? Sofia say, Hell no.” (Walker p. 81).

The women in these books break the boundaries of traditional gender roles and start to change how people look at them.

PAST OR PRESENT

One major theme from the book Beloved is how easily the past can invade a persons future and complicate it until they accept what happened. • Sethe tries to prove how much she loves Beloved

when her spirit shows up and she is forced to face what happened in the past.

• ‘Anything dead coming back to life hurts” (Morrison p. 35).

• Sethe was forced to learn slavery at a very young age by the abandonment of her mother. This carried with her into her adulthood and lead to the decision she made when killing Beloved.

REFERENCES

Morrison, Toni (1998). Beloved. New York. Random House. Print.

Walker, Alice (1982). The Color Purple. United States: Harcourt Books. Print.