The Accuracy of the Color Purple

The Color Purple is complete accuracy of female african americans and how female african americans were treated during the 1900’s. The movie was based off the novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker, who was born in Eatonton, Georgia. She was born into a family of sharecroppers and remembered how her life was during those days and applied it to the book. She spent most of her time writing to get her thoughts out, she stated “with my family, I had to hide things.

And I had to keep a lot in my mind.” following an event in here life when she was shot with a BB pellet in her right eye while playing with her older brothers. This left her with a visible scar in her eye, making her self-conscious. The book received a Pulitzer Prize in 1983, which was a feminist work about an abused and uneducated african american woman struggles for empowerment. On the other hand, the movie was written and directed by a white male, which results into the book and movie having some differences. During the time period of when the movie and book was published was during the civil rights movement. Imagine african americans already not receiving any type of respect, black women most definitely did not receive any, because they were black and a woman. The movie and was also praised for how good their female characters acted, costumed, and scripted from the fictional book to real life.

Celie, the narrator of The Color Purple, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in Georgia. Throughout the movie we see Celie, who is Whoppi Goldberg in real life, fluently go through the typical life of a black wife living with her violent husband who was named Mister. Mister barely respected Celie, he cheated on her and kept her sister, Nettie, away from her. Nettie was teaching Celie how to read and write, because she went to school and Celie did not. Mister wanted Nettie, and even attempted to rape her after she refused and fought back, Mister kicked her out after that. Never hearing from Nettie again, Celie assumes she is dead. Misters’ sister, Kate, felt sorry for Celie, and told her to fight back against mister rather than taking his abuses. Celie started writing letters to God about her life asking to heal her life, she was to scared to run away especially since her sister was gone. Harpo, Misters’ son, falls in love with a large girl named Sofia, which was young Oprah Winfrey. Sofia becomes pregnant and marries Harpo. They do not stay together forever.

When they got a divorce sophia moved in with mister and celie. The quote of “I loved Harpo, but i kill em’ dead before i let him beat me”, and the scene of when they were in the cornfield speaking to each other privately. Which resulted from sophia telling Celie that after she discovers that Mr. was beating on Celie. The mayor’s wife, Miss Millie, asked Sofia to work as her maid, after she had seen her in town. Sofia answers, “Hell no.” When the mayor slaps Sofia for her being disrespectful, she returns the slap, knocking the mayor down, and they both sent Sophia to jail. Sofia is sentenced to work twelve years as the mayor’s maid after she gets out. Celie assumes that her sister, Nettie, is dead because she had promised to write to Celie but never did, but Mister was hiding all of her mail, she finds that out by Shug Avery, who was misters secret lover, she normally came to town to sing at a local bar, but Celie is not allowed to go see her. Shug ends up telling celie that she saw him hiding letters mysteriously. Celie finds all of the letters and reads the letters, wondering how to keep herself from killing Mister when he kept something that was so important to her for years. Surprisingly Nettie, came back and visited celie, surprising her and bringing celie children to see her.

As mentioned before, the movie was praised for how well their female characters acted, how well they were costumed, and scripted from the fictional book to real life. The costumes of the movie was connected to how female african americans dressed during that time period. They wore skirts, big hats, pearl earrings, pearl necklaces, and little heeled shoes mostly all of the time. The movie was scripted to show how some women were disrespected and how some were treated like royalty, just by their looks. For example, Celie was whoopi goldberg, and she was not the prettiest, she got treated badly by her own husband and was often called ugly; but Shug avery was very pretty and she was a club singer, therefore she was treated way better than Celie. Most of all the females in the movie were uneducated, so they could not make a better living for themselves if they tried. In one scene, Mr calls celie black, poor, ugly, and celie states that until he do right by her everything will crumble. She means that nothing will ever go right by him because of how he treats her. This movie was greatly scripted, it made the fictional book into a realistic movie. The accuracy of the book connected well with the costumes, characters, and scripts to the movie.

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