English 2100

Fall 2016

Sylvor

 

Essay #4: Alice Walker, The Color Purple

 

 

4-6 pages, typed, double-spaced, 1-inch margins

 

Drafts Due: Monday, December 12^th.  Bring two copies of your draft with you to class.

 

Essays Due:  Friday, December 16^th, uploaded to turnitin.com by 8pm.

 

 

Respond to one of the following prompts:

 

1. Explore the meaning of the novel’s title. Why do you think Walker called her novel The Color Purple? Find evidence from within the novel to support your interpretation of the title and to explain how the title guides us in understanding the novel.

 

2. In her preface, Walker refers to The Color Purple as, “the theological work examining the journey from the religious back to the spiritual….” How does this description help us to understand the vision of spirituality presented in the novel? To answer this question, you might want to think about what God means to Celie and how her concept of divinity or theology changes as she matures over the course of the novel.

 

3. Focus on Nettie’s letters from Africa. What is the relationship between the experiences she describes as an African American missionary working in Africa and the experiences her sister is having at the same time in the United States? What is happening to the Olinka? Choose one of the major themes of the novel: race, gender, power, spirituality, family (or something else I haven’t thought of!) and explore its treatment in the “Nettie” portion of the narrative.

 

4. Alice Walker has always made clear that this is a feminist novel. What do you think that means? What critique does the novel offer of traditional relations between men and women? More importantly, what is its feminist vision?

 

5. As much as this is an explicitly feminist novel, it is also a novel that places the African-American experience squarely at its center. What does The Color Purple have to say about race? To answer this question, you may want to pay particular attention to those places in the novel where African Americans come into contact with people of other races (white Americans, black Africans, white Africans, etc…).  What vision of African-American identity does the novel offer?
6. Focusing on the character of Celie, consider the ways in which her character grows and changes over the course of the novel. If you choose this topic, you will need to do more than simply describe these changes; you will have to develop an understanding of what these changes mean. To the extent that this is, in certain respects, a didactic novel (a novel that tries to teach its readers something, what do we learn from Celie?

 

 

 

 

 

Essay #1: Personal Narrative

 

First Draft Due: Wednesday, September 14^th Bring 2 copies of your draft with you to class.

 

Final Version Due: Friday, September 23^rd

Essays must be uploaded to turnitin.com by 5 pm.

 

Personal narratives should be 4-5 pages long, 12pt type and double-spaced. You will be submitting your essays electronically via turnitin.com.

 

This first essay assignment is an opportunity for you to explore your own personal relationship to America or to ideas of “American-ness.” Your essay may take one of the following shapes:

 

• A reflective essay that seeks to answer the question “What does America mean to me?” through careful exploration of your own ideas and your own experiences. While essays that go this route are likely to include abstractions (freedom, opportunity, etc…), successful essays will rely on specific, concrete examples and/or anecdotes to illustrate these concepts. This essay should not be a laundry list of all of your feelings or ideas about what America means to you. You should identify a particular idea, experience, or issue about America that you wish to explore in this essay.

 

 

An autobiographical short story. If you go this route, you will write a story that may never even use the word America, but through its themes and central actions or tensions, your story will tell us something about you or your family’s relationship to America. It is up to you how to shape the perspective of the story. You may be the narrator or the protagonist, or the story may be told from the perspective of an omniscient narrator or another narratorial character