The white community is portrayed by the author to be a brutal and fearful part of town. There are many references within the novel which relate to the Black mans fear and distrust of the white community, when Celie goes to town with Mr____, he leaves her on the wagon while he goes to the dry goods store (letter10), this is the letter in which Celie thinks she meets her daughter, near the end when she and Pauline’s mother are alone in the street, Pauline’s mother starts to panic and get upset when her husbands wagon is not in sight, this shows the reader that there is unrest still when in the street, or in a public place for a black person, it also shows that the white man still intimidates, this also shows that the white man still thought he remained superior to the black man in social standing, Alice Walker touches on this quite often within the novel, her representation is based on common knowledge, and her own experience of the prejudice against her and her people.
Apart from the racial inequality due to the mindset of the white man, there does seem to be some sense of agreement between the white man in some respects, in letter 8, Pa is talking to Celie ant Netty about Celie’s education, he never looks up from cleaning his gun, until ‘Pretty soon a bunch of white mens come walking cross the yard’, when he abruptly stands up and walks off to join them, ‘They have guns too’, this is almost quiet unity between them, Pa just walk off and joins the white men, saying nothing, this could suggest that he has had a previous meeting with the men and arranged to go shooting with them. This raises an interesting point, because earlier on, Pa gets mobbed because his business was a threat to his white rivals, either he regained his trust in the white man, or this was a separate group, and he has made friends enough with them to go shooting with them.
Slavery is a big issue in ‘The Color Purple’, Celie, the heroine of the novel is proof enough that slavery was still alive back in the date; she was enslaved by her family and by her own community. The evidence that shows she was a slave in her own home is written all over the novel. The theory of slavery also incorporates ownership; the way in which Celie’s father treats her is symbolic of ownership. When Mr _____ comes for Netty wanting to take her away and marry her, Celie’s father doesn’t let him, and in turn offers him Celie. When Celie’s father introduces Mr____ to Celie, he is up on his horse; this suggests that he is higher and more important than her. Celie’s father orders her to turn around so that Mr ____ can get a better look at her; also Celie’s father adds to the offer, he offers a cow with her as an addition to the fobbing off of his daughter. This suggests strongly that this is a slavery sale that Celie’s father is selling her off, and he is showing what she is capable of; eventually Mr____ accepts Celie and marries her. The horrific abuse in the novel is also inter-linked with slavery, the harrowing descriptions of rape and the beatings Celie endures are quintessential of the theme of slavery in the novel. When a white man would go to buy a slave, he would be told what the slave was capable of, given a price and he would be taken back to the white-mans home, the slave would endure terrible working conditions, minimalistic food and drink and housing (if any), he would be beaten and abused, the slave would also not be given any possessions, he would not be allowed to own anything, this links also with Celie’s situation, she has no possessions, only her pen and paper, her children were taken away and sold by her father. This ties in very strongly to the treatment of Celie in the first ten or twenty letters in the novel. Celie is portrayed as a commodity to her owner (husband, father), used to look after the children, cook the food, clean the house and be used as a sexual object for her owner, very much similar to the treatment of a slave.
The theme of slavery can be continued to Celie’s denied education, Celie was taken out of school when she ‘…first got big’, to take away the speculation surrounding the father of the child, she did not want to leave the school and begged her father to let her go back, its is evident from the letters that Celie has little or no education to call her own. This lack of knowledge, as Celie well knew, would stunt her future development and prevent her from getting out of the situation that she was in, because of her lack of knowledge, Celie is trapped, she is unable to make judgements or even decisions to better her life, she is unable to break away from her lifestyle, one because she doesn’t know any better, she has no knowledge of what a ‘normal life’ entails, and she cannot prove herself because she simply hasn’t the vocabulary-or the knowledge to do so.
In conclusion, from the first 25 letter in the novel, the goings-on within the black community are very scary, not only are the individual members of the black community at risk from the white folk, not a deadly risk-but still a substantial risk, but they were at risk from each other. The hostility they endure from the white folk appears to have rubbed off on the black community, staining their mannerisms and creating hostility among them. The white community is portrayed by Walker to be frightening and hostile, but with the way that families were run in those days, the families were too, frightening and hostile. Slavery was also rife within the black community, although the trade had been abolished; it was hard to wipe the minds of the past slaves and their descendants of what was morally correct, and what was not. Racism, though long gone in a political sense, was still strong within communities of white and black people, black people were still prejudiced against for their colour, they were given a lot less respect than they were entitled to, Shug Avery within the novel acts as a role model for the black community, showing them that it is possible to make it the world of the white man.
