Examine Walker's narrative techniques in The Color Purple including consideration of the use of letters, language and imagery, as well as responding to critical opinions of these techniques.

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Examine Walker's narrative techniques in The Color Purple including consideration of the use of letters, language and imagery, as well as responding to critical opinions of these techniques.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a short novel set in the Southern States of America during the 1920's. The main character in the book is a black girl named Celie who writes letters to God in a diary form about her unusually traumatic life. Celie's writing letters to God is known as an epistolary form, because letters to God or in a religious context are called epistles. Walker's language, style and choice of letters instead of chapters are effective in many ways, both in telling the story and also in conveying important themes.

Celie's letters to God are a very effective medium for Walker to convey messages to the reader. They present an intimate view of the character's thoughts without interference from the author and they convey the shape of events to come with dramatic immediacy. They are all unsigned and read more like diary entries and therefore they involve the reader in more ways than one. Firstly, the reader connects with the first-person narrator and empathises with her as a mature adult reading a child's plea for help- "Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me". Yvonne Johnson comments on this bonding between reader and character- "the reader... has a voyeuristic sense of reading messages and hearing voices that were not meant for public consumption."

Moreover, the novel requires a reasonably high level of interaction from the reader. Due to the dialect form Walker incorporates into her novel, the reader is required to work out the meaning of certain phrases and must also read between the lines to receive the full intended meaning of a letter. For instance, when Celie says "I'm big", some readers may not understand that she actually means 'pregnant'. Most of the novel, with the exception of Nettie's letters is written in black colloquial instead of the conventional Standard English. Due to its unconventional style and structure, one critic, Barbara Christian refers to the novel as a "post-modern" form. She regards the novel as both "fragmented and whole". By this she means each letter can be extracted from the novel and understood independently from the rest of the letters. Walker is therefore encouraging the reader to be an 'active reader', more involved in the development and interpretation of the plot. An example of this 'active reading' can be found in letter 53. Celie has just discovered Nettie's hidden letters and the first one describes how Albert tried to rape her. Although there is no date on the letter, we know when it is written just from observing the content- "When I left you all's house". Once we ascertain when this letter was written, we are compelled as readers to track back in the novel to that point in time. Barbara Christian adds to this "fragment and whole" observation with another. Her perception of the novel's structure is similar to that of a quilt, in that each letter is an individual piece and each piece is enhanced by the surrounding pieces. Walker backs this up in an interview- "A crazy quilt story is one that can jump back and forth in time, work on many different levels."

Some of the advantages from writing in the epistolary style can be clearly spotted in the opening letters.

The first few letters tell us of shocking events such as rape and death. Instead of re-telling these events in a 3rd-person narrator style, Walker writes through the victim of the suffering, Celie. Celie at this point in time is only 14 years old and is clearly confused about the events that she writes about. We can see this from the poor punctuation and grammar Walker writes with. For instance, the second letter opens with a short, sharp, emphatic sentence- "My mama dead". The lack of grammar coupled with the shocking event being reported is very effective. Because we see the letter as having been written by a 14 year old girl, we sympathise with the character more than if the event were described in detail to us by a narrator. This has a shocking impact on the reader, as we see Celie as being a real person, and not just a character. Her plea for help is an extension of this shock, and our response is one of protection, resulting in a strong parent-child bond.
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Mel Watkins, a critic of the novel, observes that "her (Celie's) letters are written in dialect and from the perspective of a naïve, uneducated adolescent." Moreover, this style draws us closer to the innocent Celie. Although this dialect may make it difficult for the reader to follow the events (especially in the first letters), Mel Watkins believes this style is crucial to the novel- "The cumulative effect is a novel that is convincing because of the authenticity of its folk voice." In this statement, Watkins seems to be also referring to the refreshing style in which Celie writes ...

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