<doc.id=3018.b5>
<title> There and back again; A character's journey from humiliation to self-confidence. </title>
I have studied the character Celie in Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple, with emphasis on, how she is manipulated, or in some cases forced, away from a belief in her own judgment and faith in herself , and then on, how she finally gains enough strength to find her true self . In this essay, I will describe what I have found to be the three main aspects of this manipulation and the two things that make Celie find strength to change her situation. 
	The first and may be easiest aspect to recognize of this manipulation, is violence. Physical strength is the most basic form of power, in other words, when Celie's oppressors beat her it is to make sure that Celie knows that she is inferior to them. But, Celie has not only been frequently abused physically but also sexually from a very young age by her father, and later by her husband. It is impossible to imagine what this kind of abuse means, but that it very much disables Celie's emotional-life for a long time, is beyond doubt. In addition to this, Celie has to protect her younger sister Nettie from their stepfather's desires. It is self evidently that as long as Celie is staggering under these horrible burdens, she can not possibly have the strength to stand up for herself. Celie's stepfather has so completely broken Celie that she does not even reflect on that her stepfather gives her to Mr____, as if she was less than a slave. 
	The second main aspect of the manipulation is ignorance. Celie's oppressors do everything they can to keep her from realizing her own worth and abilities. Education and self-esteem are the keys to Celie's prison, but her father and husband will never let her have them. A clear example of both keeping Celie ignorant and at the same time degrade her, is when Celie becomes pregnant, raped by her stepfather at the age of fourteen, her stepfather takes her out of school and explains to her that "You too dumb to keep going to school." (p.11). Celie's stepfather and her husband are both of them very successful in convincing Celie that she is worthless, ugly and stupid. By doing so, they make sure that she is going to keep on being their ignorant slave. In fact, Celie is so broken that she even fetches the belt her husband asks for to beat her with. In the passage where Celie tells Sophie about how she can not feel anger, it becomes obvious that for every time Celie fails to stand up for herself, she is rendered weaker and weaker and finally she can do nothing but repress her emotions. 
	 The third main aspect of the manipulation is the one that I perceive as the most emphasized, and may be most important one, in this novel, namely religion. Celie's belief in a " big and old and tall and graybearded and white" (p.201) god with bluish-gray eyes that watches and, when the time comes, judges you, is what makes Celie stay and accept her bondage. The religion forced on her is the very foundation upon which all her sufferings are built. A religion that pays no heed to black people and in particular not to black women is a dangerous thing in the hands of the oppressors. Or, as Alice Walker so wisely puts it, "It is fatal to love a God who does not love you. A God specifically created to comfort, lead, advise, strengthen, and enlarge the tribal borders of someone else."1. By making Celie believe that everything that happens is God's will and that it is your obligation towards God to accept you destiny, the men around Celie can treat her any way they want to without objections. As a good black Christian woman, Celie does not lift a finger to protect herself from what she is told to be God's divined will. Who is she, a poor black women, to question God's actions, or rather lack of action?
	As religion is the main obstacle in Celie's personal development, it is not before she overcomes her religion that she can truly start to find her true self. Celie's discussion with Shug about God is very much the turning point in Celie's life. To find through Shug, a faith of an ever loving and caring God that loves everything he has made, including poor black women, is what makes Celie open her eyes and see her own value and that she has a rightful place in God's creation. When Celie substitutes the white male God for a genderless mother-nature, she finds a new view of the world that she can associate with and love. Or, as Shug tells Celie, "You have to git man [God as the white male] off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall." (p.204). In the passage where Celie stands up to her husband, we can clearly see that although nothing has changed between them, Celie has found a new strength that nobody can take from her. 
	Although Celie's new conceptions of God are what finally makes her find an inner love for herself and subsequently strength to break free, there are things without which she could never have found in her to change her situation, namely love and support from her close ones. If Nettie's letter with all their love and consideration had reached Celie earlier, Celie's story would probably have been quite different. The letters made Celie realize that she wasn't alone and that gave her hope. They also awoke strong feelings in her that she had not had strength to feel for a very long time. To Celie the letters became a cathartic experience, a way to find and direct her anger, hate and sorrow. In addition to the letters Celie found something very rare for a woman in her situation, true and answered love. Shug is very much the key figure in Celie's life. Not only because she is the one who opens Celie's eyes to the wonders of nature, but because she is the first person who Celie loves, not only on the platonic level but also on the sexual, and that she loves Celie back. Shug is the first person that Celie tells what she has been through, and the first person who stood up for Celie when Celie could not herself. Without Shug's love and support, Celie could never have found strength enough to take charge of her own destiny. Shug as a strong women with a strong mind , becomes Celie's role model and source of inspiration. 
	Finally, there is naturally much more to such complicated subjects as manipulation and self-realization, but the aspects stated above are the ones I have found to be the most important. As I have stated earlier, I see religion as the most emphasized feature of the manipulation and therefor arguably the most important one, but it is when all three aspects converge and intertwine that we get Celie's story. The aspects are strongly interconnected and together, they form a social and cultural setting that manipulates its characters away from a belief in their own judgment and a faith in themselves. When it comes to Celie's struggle to self-realization, it is a journey that is very much linked to the three aspects. First the violence stops, then Celie finds love and friendship, which shows her that she is everything but useless, and finally, she sees through the religious hypocrisy that has chained her to her situation. To sum up, life can be very hard but when we open our eyes, we find, that we truly live in the best of worlds.
1Walker, Alice. The only reason you want to go to heaven is that you have been driven out of you mind . Humanist, Sept/Oct 97, Vol. 57 Issue5, p29, 5p, 1c
</doc>