I can't stand it. I'm writing a review on
The Color Purple, and I'm doing it RIGHT NOW. This is a book I never would have picked up to read for fun, so, obviously, it was connected to a class that I'm taking (this is also the same class that made me watch a film that had Brad Pitt in it, something I had promised myself I would never do). I read the book yesterday, and now I'm having to write gooshy mushy things about how good it is, why I think this is a great book, and why it is great for adapting to the screen. Next week I'll get to write about how nice the script is and how marvelous the film is.
The fact is, the book is anything but, however, there is no option to say why I think
The Color Purple is a BAD book. And I'm going to break step with the old adage "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Because I AM going to say something. And it will NOT be nice. Why? Because NO ONE ELSE IS STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE AND SAYING IT! It all comes down to this:
The Color Purple is too politically correct to make a good story.
What caused me to finally crack was that I had to compose a list of the themes in the book. Sitting down, I immediately wrote the first five phrases that sprang to mind as themes:
- Men Are Evil
- White People Are Bad
- Straight People Are Backward
- Spelling is Optional
- Religion is Delusional
Obviously, I will be awarded a huge "FAIL" if I turn that in, so I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to be that NICE person that finds some way to say it has great points about independence, self-discovery, and a variety of other nice sounding things that used to mean great, high values. However, it does lead me to give a rather scathing review about
The Color Purple.
Description:
The Color Purple is the story of a African-American woman named Celie, who was abused at a very young age by her step-father. The man she was forced to marry kept up the abuse. She was finally freed from her slavery when another woman, who also happened to be her husband's lover, comes to live in her house and makes her husband behave and introduces Celie to the wonder of real (sexual) freedom. Celie and her companion (who is also married. To, like, three different guys at the same time) discover that man is truly evil, and, since God has to be some white male with a long beard, that he really doesn't exist. They find that the REAL god exists in nature, and every thing, living or not, has a bit of god in them. To free Celie completely from the chains of her past life, they choose to leave and move, eventually returning to Celie's home town to repossess the property and business that Celie's step-father had stolen from Celie and her sister.
Critique:
The Color Purple is a sorry excuse for a story. In an attempt to be politically correct and diverse, Alice Walker wrote herself out of what potentially could have been a great story. The writing style itself makes the book extremely difficult to read. For example, from page 17:
First she smile a little. Then she frown. Then she don't look no special way at all. She just stick close to me. She tell me, Your skin. Your hair, Your teefs...He say one night in bed, Well, us done help Nettie all we can. Now she got to go. Where she gon go? I ast.
Now, I work with small children. I can read what they write, and it doesn't bother me that much. However, none of them write books. After slogging through 288 pages of bad spelling, my brain was home to the world's worst headache.
If it had been the spelling alone, I could have managed. Yet, in the name of equality, social wrongs could not just be righted, they needed to be turned on their head. Men are subservient to women. Blacks are higher beings than scum whites/asians/indians/etc. They're just the black "rejects" (yes, the book does argue that non-blacks were run out of Africa because they are devolved beings that are not true humans. It is in Nettie and Celie's correspondence, if you feel the need to look it up for yourself, the one addressing it in the most detail begins on page 271). Equality is for the dogs, apparently!
I'm sorry to break it to the world, but, this book is not "a work to stand beside literature of any time and place" (San Francisco Chronicle), nor is it "a saga filled with joy and pain, humor and bitterness, and an array of characters who live, breathe and illuminate the world" (Publishers Weekly).
The Color Purple is a near-plotless work that is dying a slow, painful death due to drowning in political correctness. We are beyond the French calling the world to "Bow down to the goddess of Reason!" rather, we have reached the place of bowing down to Irrationality, where right is wrong and wrong is right.
What ever happened to realizing that we are "created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that REALLY mean we are all created equal, except for whites, Christians, and heterosexuals. Excuse me, I'll go pack my bags and leave you to rewrite history and life so you can live in your nice little alternate reality on earth. Ciao!
