Alice Walkers Novel The Color Purple Differs from Its Film - Essay Example

The Color Purple: Novel to Film with a Different Message Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple, investigates the black American woman’s experience. The main character, Celie, is presented as a black woman heavily oppressed, trained early to be subservient and completely conventional in her ideas as a result. Through epistolary segments, the maturation process of Celie is revealed in letters to God and Nettie, Celie’s sister, that indicate her changing ideas and strengthening resolve. Influenced by the appearance of strong women within her world, such as her step-son’s wife and especially the ‘wild-woman’ Shug, Celie is able to find inner strength and value she never suspected. By the end of the novel, Walker’s Celie has become a confident, powerful and successful business woman growing old in the love of her family. In making the transition from novel to film, though, there is a significant loss of fundamental message as changes made for the shift in media and Hollywood interpretation weaken the female characters and sympathize with the male characters to the point where women ultimately remain at a lower social level than men despite their hardships and triumphs. Within the book, Celie’s progression occurs in a much more obvious progression than the subtle movement of the character seen in the film adaptation as a direct result of the translation from literature to film. Celie begins the novel in poverty of spirit and opportunity. As a young black girl living on a 1930s cotton farm in the South, she is isolated from the rest of her community and immediately placed on the bottom rung of society in that she is black and she is female. This means she is oppressed by the white people as well as oppressed by the black men. At 14 years old, her mother is already worn out from life and soon dies while Celie becomes her father’s new sexual and emotional outlet, a mere object upon which he can vent. While her emotions of guilt, shame and despair as the two children he fathers on her are taken away “to be with God” are revealed in her nearly illiterate diary, these never come close to being considered by those around her. All of these elements are present in the film with the single exception of the nearly illiterate diary. It is impossible to understand from the information available in the film, that Celie directs her thoughts to God alone as the only one who might understand her particular pain. Instead, the film version of Celie seems to have little or no outlet for these types of thoughts. She is at once more isolated and constrained than the character in the book and less able to convey her maturation to the audience. With Harpo’s wife’s ideas of Celie’s passiveness rankling in her soul and Sofia’s example before her, Celie receives an unexpected boost from her husband’s lover, Shug. Shug has been a successful singer before she came to live with the family and this independence fascinates Celie, who had never considered that a woman might truly be able to make her own decisions. Through Shug, Celie learns that her sister has been alive for all these years, that she has been happy and that she has found the two children Celie lost when she herself was still a child. A significant difference between the film and the novel involves the lesbian affair Celie has with Shug. Through this relationship, Celie learns both that she is capable of being loved and that she can have the power and strength to leave her abusive husband if she desires. At the dinner table one night, she tells him, “You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say. It’s time to leave you and enter Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need” (207). However, this relationship is only mildly suggested in the film. At the same time, Shug is portrayed in the film as struggling with internal pain of her own in attempting to reconcile herself with her father. Her continued dependence on her father’s acceptance to relieve her pain reduces Shug’s effectiveness in teaching Celie that men are not necessary for a black woman to be happy. In subsequent action in the book, Celie leaves the state, starts her own business and becomes very successful. One her own and with her own success to support her, Celie decides to reunite with her husband, who has dramatically reformed, and takes up an equal or perhaps slightly superior position to him within the home they share. Renewed connection with her sister has revealed that Nettie, in Africa, became both aunt and step-mother to Celie’s lost children and, by the end of the novel, will bring them back to America to know their mother. Finally, Celie is able to settle down in a home of her own to enjoy her success and her family. This is not the case in the film. Celie’s success on her own is only hinted at, in much the same way her love affair with Shug is only hinted at. Nettie does bring the children home in a beautiful scene at the end of the book, but Celie is living in her father’s old house that has been left to her by a widowed step-mother who felt it was only right and Albert, Celie’s ex-husband, stands isolated in a field across the road with his horse, watching the reunion as his only repayment for his efforts in bringing them together. The nature of the book enables readers to understand Celie’s inner thoughts and impressions as she writes to first God and then Nettie. This enables the audience to see Celie’s world as Celie sees it and gives the audience a chance to trace her progression as a character from passively accepting her cruel oppression to actively standing up for her own rights as a human being and achieving happiness. The medium of film prevents this concept from being conveyed both because of time constraints and for reasons of entertainment. Celie’s writing becomes sewing on a quilt that suggests her reflective spirit, but not the thoughts going through her mind. Other changes, such as the weakening of Shug and the elimination of the lesbian affair between Shug and Celie prevent the film audience from realizing just how Celie took so much strength and courage out of Shug’s example while the elimination of details of Celie’s life on her own prevents the film audience from understanding just what kind of position of strength Celie achieved in the end. Her glance at Albert in the field across the road at the end implies that she still owes him a chance to apologize rather than portraying her as taking it upon herself to return and care for this broken man out of the kindness of her heart. In the end, the book that portrays the transition of a highly oppressed woman of color into a strong and beautiful individual of the world is made into a film that illustrates the stronger yet still subservient position of women in popular culture. Works Cited The Color Purple. Dir. Stephen Spielberg. Perf. Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Margaret Avery. Amblin Entertainment, 1985. Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1982. Read More