我是小圃

I read the Chinese version of The Color Purple when I was a freshman, but at that time I didn’t like it so much. The life in the book was so strange and so miserable，and reading the story made me quite uncomfortable. Well, a girl’s growing into a strong, independent individual is interesting, if this process not so miserable. I think the movie is just OK, in the movie, the absence of Albert and Netties’s dates, Celie and Shug’s relationship, Grays’s love to Squeak, and Squeak’s experiences, makes the story more attractive and acceptable. Here I’d like to talk about the movie, which has been redited, simplified, and enpured.

We can see that each woman in the movie has her own way.

Celie, our main character, maybe the most miserable one in the whole story, was raped by her stepfather at 14, and had to be apart from her two children and later, her sister Nettie. Her husband thinks her nothing ,always beats her, abuses her, even forbides her correspondence with Nettie. In order to forget the sufferings and live on, Celie is used to surposing herslef to be a plant ,maybe a tree. But she has enough kindness and love to others. Sometimes I wonder why she can be so kind to Shug from the very beginning, who is taken home and loved by her husband , and says “you are so ugly ”at the first glance, in fact Celie has enough excuse to hate Shug, but she takes good care to sick Shug, like a good servant. Her gentle song and good care comforts Shug, recovers her, and wins her respect and love. With the help of Shug, she gradually recoganizes her own value. Supported by the love of Nattie and Shug，she begins to resist for her rights and dignity，she leaves her marriage and starts her brandnew life. She earns her living by designing and making pants, and finally gets together with her

Alice Walker

sister, thanks to her repented husband.

Sofia is an animal-like woman in the movie, I think. I don’t belive something “her beautiful eyes”.

Of course, she is the first woman who dared to challage Albert’s authorities, she has a strong sense of self-respect and self-protection, and she does everything by her instinct, she marries Harpo, argues with him, and leaves him finding him impossible to give her enough respect. The woman seldom considers others, I mean at first, and I haven’t found her show true love to others, that’s one reason I don’t like her. But she manages her own life, using her huge body and powerful fist and terrible yell, until the conflict with the mayor. And her nightmare starts from here, she is tortured to death(we all remember her big change in appearance when she set free from the jail). I think she can stand for a type like this : directly fighting against any oppression upon herself, in a violent, sometimes crazy way. That is natural, but not so clever. Gu Hongming says in his Chinese People’s Spirit “love rightness with good taste”, this good taste, in my opion, is to be smart, aware of the the situation, and seek the best way to get what you want.

Shug, my favorite character in the movie, is also the hero here. It is she that teaches Celie how to be her own person, and helps her to be independent. Shug might be not so good morally, but she has her way to resist, her song expresses her motions, her feelings, and sometimes can be great power, like religion. Her way of life is also have two sides, immorality and individualism.

And these are I conclution about “the way” from these women’s ways :

Surrendering to devils only to make things worse. we can see Celie’s miserable thirty years, she accepts her husband’s yells and beatings, hides her sufferings and sorrow, works as a horse, but she gets nothing from her life. In Possessing the Secret of Joy Alice walker says that resistance is the secret of joy, I like this saying, and I think it is also the secrect of happiness.

Love can give one strength, protect him(her) from hurt and mistakes  I like a sentence said by Albert Camus “we should go further than hate, ……beyond hate is love.”He thinks that a person without any love in the heart is not right, even this person is fighting for rightness. We can see that the love with Shug makes Celie realize her own value, she resists with the support of Shug and Nettie’s love. Celie’s love comforts and enpures Shug’s heart, helps her lead a more moral and reasonable life. And it is also love that worms Sofia’s broken heart, and cures her hurt, makes her confident with the life again.

Resistance should be limited and well organized If Celie had killed Mr._, her fate would be quite different, she would end up in prison without any opportunity to meet her sister. And Sofia, does pay much for her momentary impulsee and reasonlessness, in fact the conflict with the mayor couple can be avoidable if not her bad temper. So I believe that our resistance should be limited, Alice herself says “when we're attacked, and we suffer, what that's supposed to teach us is not that we want to attack other people to make them suffer. ” “Other people”is a bound , and there are other bounds, like the laws of the nature, that of the society , or love to the world. These thing can make a happy or at least an ordinary life, which is the aim of resistance and should be always kept.

 

Alice walker says “The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart”, and I’d like to say when the broken heart still can love, there is a way forward.

  最后一句，与某位近期失恋的朋友共勉
其实，已经有点不知道写的啥了，里面的人都不认得我了～～