The color purple

I must confess that I first read this book after seeing the movie. For the first time in my life, I was very disappointed. I thought the movie was SO much better than the book. They are so different that it is sort of hard to compare the two. Maybe if I had not already seen the movie, I would have enjoyed it more, but I am still glad I read it.

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Like Reading Your Relative's Old Letters [5][T]

This book centers on Celie whose letters divide each chapter of the book -- either letters by her to people or God, and few from her sister to her.

In the book, Celie says God's gift can sometimes be overlooked -- like his sneaking a purple flower (the color purple) in an otherwise blandly colored field. If you don't see the purple, she tells you "God gets pissed." We may have learned this lesson with other sayings: "Every cloud has a silver lining" or "From every bad comes good."

Celie's life is the personification of the bland field. Maybe much worse. Her father's success leads him to a painful and horrific death. Her mother's witnessing of that death leads her to a physical and mental breakdown. Then it gets worse for Celia: incest; battered wife syndrome; immersion into a household of spoiled children; and more.

But, a flower springs in her purgatory. Celie encounters love, success, esteem, wealth and finally -- reunion. One by one, step by step, the reader watches her character blossom. And, most pleasingly, we see those around her similarly mature to greater heights.

Unlike the well nominated film of the same name (which batted a miserable average with few Oscar victories -- if any), many of the evil characters mature or see their misgivings and improve as human beings -- and much of that improvement is from their association with Celie.

Even the wife-beating, male chauvinist pigs, by the book's end, have reformed to embrace Celie and her lesbian lover. Wow! Such an open-minded community in the deep south in the 1940's. That is what makes a great novel. And, from such character growth, we can only conclude that the book -- like most other books -- is better than its highly acclaimed movie of same name.

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Violet Broadway

Call me Violet Broadway.... I am all color purple all the time, I just love all of the different covers.

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