The Color Purple- Religion Theme

In the Color Purple, Celie uses "Dear God" as her salutation to every letter. As told in the beginning of the novel, Mr. ___ told her not to tell anyone that he abused her but only God. Therefore, leading her letters to direct to the only person she could tell, God. However, though the subject of God is not nearly as discussed as other aspects- it is still a very interesting aspect to unfold. 

By being a black abused woman, Celie turned to write her letters to God as the one person she could tell everything to. However, it is not clear if she really does understand and value what/who God really is. That is until she finds out that Mr. ___ never gave her the letters Nettie had written her over the years. Outraged and angered at the fact that most of her life had been a lie, she starts to write letters to Nettie instead. As Shug addresses the change of salutations in the letters to Celie. Celie furiously replies, "...he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won't ever see again." (Walker, 192). Celie goes on by saying that God is just like the other men in her life. He possesses the same characteristics of all other men- trifling, forgetful and lowdown. 

Understanding Celie's point of view and her lost of faith, it may be clear that Celie might have never known the real meaning of God or faith. She was instructed not to tell anyone her secrets about Mr. ___ but God, leaving her to never fully grasp the idea of religion. How could God make sense to me during my struggles?- Celie might ask, could be the reason why she started to write letters to Nettie instead. 

The main point I thought that stood out to me was Shug's reaction to Celie's furious reply of why she does not address God anymore: "The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit." (Walker, 195). Shug's outlook on God could be looked as a pantheistic point of view of religion, meaning that the universe and everything within composes as God. This really interested me because I do not personally put myself into an organized religion until now. The way Shug tells Celie her point of view and how to view God is very touching and inspirational. I can relate to Celie in the moving to more religious aspect. As Celie sees God as genderless and race-less and more of a universe being that wants all beings to enjoy every aspect of life, I began to connect my point of view with this one. As the story begins with Celie barely knowing the true aspect of God- she ends her last letter with a new salutation, "Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God." (Walker, 285). Leaving her with a better understanding of her new outlook on faith. I chose to write about this topic because it was very touching and meaningful. With being an unreligious person, I began to connect with a faith- pantheism- and for once, I felt like I belonged to a religion that I fully understood and agreed with. Walker does a very nice way of including different themes in her story without being blunt and straight forward about them. 

Literary Context: Kindred by Octavia Butler

Reproducing Time, Reproducing History: Love and Black Feminist Sentimentality in Octavia Butler's Kindred by Linh U. Hua focuses on specifically Alice and Dana. Hua starts out by focusing specifically on a passage from Kindred:

. . . I turned to say good-bye to Alice, called her name once. She was beating a pair of Rufus's pants, and she kept beating them with no break in her rhythm to indicate that she had heard me.

"Alice!" I called louder.

She did not turn, did not stop her beating and beadng of those pants, though I was certain' now that she heard me. . . . "Good-bye, Alice," I said, this time not expecting any answer. There was none. (Butler, 185).

Hua makes importance on the way Alice lacks engagement to Dana which can be viewed as a host of antilock and antifeminist tendencies that are present in contemporary liberal analysis. Hua believes that this passage is the most sentimental of scenes and also the most problematic. "...the scene's interpretation and impact within the text and among scholars replays a host of antilock, antifeminist tendencies that continue to embed themselves in contemporary liberal analysis." (Hua, 391). Speculative time and the literary and culture production of violence in abolitionist literature in the nineteenth century helps better understand the moments of radicalization during this scene. Speculative time is the interaction between whiteness and future that is shaped through slave trade- overall it is, "the material transformation of temporal experience". (Hua, 391). Hua essay establishes the affective refusal rather than incapacity by looking at black feminist sentimentality. Black feminist sentimentality is the way we naturally look at history, intimacy and love in a sentimental way. Hua continues to analyze Kindred through the setting as a basis for antiblack and antifeminist ideology. Therefore, Dana's miscommunication with Alice during the scene solidifies Alice's miscommunication as a two-dimensionality in continuity of this investment in speculative time.

Hua breaks her analysis into three sections: Speculative Time: History and Sentimentality, Temporal Ethics: History as Alibi and Critical Time: Black Feminist Sentimentality. The first section, Speculative Time: History and Sentimentality expresses the relationship between Alice and Dana as the core of black feminist politics due to the promises and obstructions off alliance of black feminist sentimentality. As Dana leaves Alice, it demonstrates the unethical sentimentalism of romance dealing with patriarchal lineage and the promises of speculative time meaning that Dana must side with Rufus to keep her lineage alive. Dana must naturalize the violence and stand the violence towards Alice to reinforce her future. The second section, Temporal Ethics: History as Alibi introduces a classic narrative of Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Fredereick Douglass's Narrative of the Life which are classified as the genre of sentimental fiction. Kindred can be categorized as a neo-slave narrative. Hua touches base on the questioning by black feminists about how racist capitalist securities in the future shape our perception of history by violence acted upon Afro-American women and also Afro-American people in general. The third section, Critical Time: Black Feminist Sentimentality, deals with the actions of Dana that are considered as "undetectable moments of radical black feminist agency that rewrite hierarchical models of love and sentimentality, crucial acts of rebellion performed by Alice and Nigel that change the meaning and story of Kindred." (Hua, 400). The politics of black feminist sentimentality gestures our understanding of critical time in a political and personal sense while also viewing the myth of speculative time that underscores the origins of trade and enslavement of Afro-Americans. Hua main point of this article is to help us understand our attachment to history in a sentimental view and also see how violence is produced in the critical present like it was in the critical time of antebellum Maryland. By understanding Alice's role in Kindred we are able to overlook and overwrite a demonstration "..of a critical kind of love that is black, feminist, and ethically sentimental." (Hua, 404). 

Hua, Linh U. "Reproducing Time, Reproducing History: Love And Black Feminist Sentimentality In Octavia Butler's "Kindred.." African American Review 44.3 (2011): 391-407. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.

Time Travel, Violence and the Impacts on Relationship illustrates how time travel has an affect on her relationship with others and also how violence during her time in antebellum Maryland has affected these relationships. The author states his opinion about how he believes that time travel has affected Dana's relationship with her husband, Kevin, and how violence in the past and present affect her relationships in both Pasadena and Maryland. In the beginning, Dana's time travel confuses herself and Kevin and also worries him that she is going back into the past. When Kevin begins to time travel that is when their relationship starts to become hectic. The author focuses on their response from being away from each other in the past as separate people and also their response from their distance away from each other. 

Time travel occurs when Dana is in danger. By attending to back in the past when Rufus is in danger, she begins to form a relationship with him but that is soon destroyed when violent acts by Rufus are taken upon Dana. Another act of violence that is portrayed in Kindred is the scene when Dana cuts herself- an act that will send her to time travel to the present. "Since violence is a key factor to time travel it can be an essential factor to Dana’s relationships in determining the time period she is present in, in order to decide how she is going to portray herself in those relationships with the people she is around." (Kindredmania). The author also states that these are key factors when trying to understand the characters and their motives. Violence and time travel are essential when understanding Dana's relationship with those when in the past and present. Overall, I agree with this analysis of Kindred because I do feel like violence and time travel are important factors in Kindred. Time travel affected Dana and Kevin's relationship by allowing them to encounter history that they were never apart of. Because of Kevin's privilege of being a white male, it in a way influences his way to look at Dana as not his wife but an Afro-American slave woman. There are many other examples of how their relationship with each other changed and was affected by antebellum Maryland. 

"Literary Analysis." Kindred. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2014. <http://kindredmania.wordpress.com/literar-analysis/>.

I believe that the scholars analysis is the strongest interpretation due to many sources that were cited throughout the essay. However, it was the least engaging. I found it very hard to read and follow due to the particular voice and the audience it was directed towards that would be more familiar with the language being used. I understood some of what the Hua was saying but most of it, was unfamiliar to me because I am not particularly known to read scholarly articles by those that are recognizable in this field. The scholarly analysis is the supported the best due to the 18 pages of sources that were cited. Some of these sources were from Ashraf H. A., Darlene Clark Hine, Barbara Smith, Adam McKible and many others including their literature works. Whereas the website article had no other sources cited except for one from Kindred. I do fully agree with the website analysis because it was easily accessible to read and understand. I do believe that violence and time travel, as stated before, are key themes in this book.