Violence In The Color Purple By Alice Walker

Violence is a critical issue which is surprisingly still developing throughout the earth today. Violence is a problem which separates everybody. In The Color Purple, violence is one of the active themes in the novel. One of the main characters, Celie, lives a cruel, disgusting life during the beginning of the novel. Although Celie is being abused and hurt every day, she learns to overcome it and become stronger. Once the reader discovers that Celie had been first sexually assaulted at the age of fourteen, this book screams out violence to all of its readers. This book contains many different types of violence such as emotional, sexual, and physical violence. Much of the violence in this novel is directed only at the black race. This novel explores many different themes throughout each and every page such as racism, friendship, and violence.
One of the most intriguing themes in this novel is most certainly racism. Racism is an unnecessary act which is still living in the world today which keeps people reading this novel and is the one of the things that inspired Alice Walker to write this novel. One example of racism is during the beginning of the novel. The mayor’s wife rudely spoke racist words to Sofia, one of the main characters. She tells Sofia, "All your children so clean, would you like to work for me, be my maid?" When Sofia defended herself, she was put in jail and beaten. Alice amazingly expressed a lot of racism in this part of the book. To add on, Mary Agnes felt like her boyfriend Harpo was being racist towards her. She asked Harpo, “Do you really love me, or just my color?” Racism is definitely a powerful and effective theme in the Color Purple which essentially makes the novel more