Yihan Wang
Mr. Brennan
English 10H:H
12 May 2014
Power of Religion, Value of Existence
Natural science and social science have been questioning the existence of God for
hundreds of years. Commonly, people are all eager for the rational answers to the
unknowns in their life. However, no matter how universe changes, there must be
something that cannot be explained by the existing knowledge. This impossibility
gives people the space to have faith in some invisible power. In Alice Walker's The
Color Purple, a successfully subversive novel, experiencing so many sorrows, joys,
pains, and loves, Celie continually looks for the position of herself in the nature and
develops her spiritual being through this process.
According to the progress of Celie through The Color Purple, I would suggest that
Celie's religious conversion, from believing traditional figure of God to a view that
God is everything, is one of the most important reasons which cause her inner
development from being accustomed to the oppression under the domination of
patriarchy to affirming and finding the value of her existence.
Wang 1
In The Color Purple, Alice Walker suggests her own religious idea through Shug's
words that God is everything (195). Through Walker's own religious experience, it is
easy to find that she does believe in God, but she is not the traditional Catholic that
people recognize. In her earlier work, she forced on portrayal of the opposition of
traditional Christianity. For instance, in The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Grange
is described as a Christian till he is shot. As Hankinson notes, Walker "unshackles"
Grange from Christianity, but provided him no "final recourse"(328). Because of its
repudiation of Christianity, it is also the evidence that reveals Walker's tendency to
pantheism.
Walker's alternative of pantheism is expressed in both of her ordinary life...