The Color Purple Summary
Alice Walker

Everything you need to understand or teach The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

The Color Purple Summary & Study Guide
17 Student Essays
2 Encyclopedia Articles
17 Literature Criticisms
1 Book Notes
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30 The Color Purple Lessons
20 Activities
180 Multiple Choice Questions
60 Short Essay Questions
20 Essay Questions
Pre-Made Tests and Quizzes
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The Color Purple Summary

The Color Purple, Alice Walker's third novel, was published in 1982. The novel brought fame and financial success to its author. It also won her considerable praise and much criticism for its controversial themes. Many reviewers were disturbed by her portrayal of black males, which they found unduly negative. When the novel was made into a film in 1985 by Steven Spielberg, Walker became even more successful and controversial. While she was criticized for negative...

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Encyclopedia Articles (2)

The Color Purple - Alice Walker - 1982

8,940 words, approx. 30 pages

The Color Purple - Alice Walker - 1982 Introduction Although she is an accomplished writer of novels, short stories, essays, and poems, Alice Walker is best known for her award-winning novel The Color... Read more

The Color Purple

4,000 words, approx. 14 pages

The Color Purple by Alice Walker Born in 1944, novelist and poet Alice Walker grew up in the rural South, which provides the setting for much of her fiction. Active as a student in the civil rights... Read more

Alice Walker Biographies (8)

Alice Malsenior Walker

1,295 words, approx. 5 pages

Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Alice Walker (born 1944) was best known for her stories about black women who achieve heroic stature within the confines of their ordinary day-to-day lives.Alice Walker... Read more

Alice (Malsenior) Walker

5,781 words, approx. 20 pages

Alice Walker is a talented, versatile writer from the modern South. Since the appearance of her first book in 1968, she has published poetry, fiction, and criticism, all of which have advanced her li... Read more

Alice (Malsenior) Walker

8,165 words, approx. 28 pages

Since 1968 when Once, her first work, was published, Alice Walker has sought to bring closer that day for which her maternal ancestors waited--"a day when the unknown thing that was in them would be... Read more

Alice (Malsenior) Walker

13,404 words, approx. 45 pages

[This entry was updated by Donna Haisty Winchell (Clemson University) from her entry in DLB 143: American Novelists Since World War II, Third Series, pp. 277-292.]Alice Walker knows firsthand the soci... Read more

Alice Malsenior Walker

9,879 words, approx. 33 pages

Biography EssaySince 1968 when Once, her first work, was published, Alice Walker has sought to bring closer that day for which her maternal ancestors waited-"a day when the unknown thing that was in ... Read more

Alice Walker

5,796 words, approx. 20 pages

Best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple, as well as for its adaptation as a motion picture by Steven Spielberg, Alice Walker has become a totem for black feminism, what she c... Read more

Alice Walker

3,302 words, approx. 12 pages

Alice Walker was the leading English textual critic of the 1950s and 1960s. Much of her scholarship was undertaken to prepare for the editing of William Shakespeare, particularly the Oxford Old-Spelli... Read more

Alice Walker

10,204 words, approx. 35 pages

Walker was born February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, about seventy-five miles southeast of Atlanta. She was the youngest of eight children, five boys and three girls, all of whom lived in a three-or... Read more

Essays & Analysis (34)

Critical Essay by M. Teresa Tavormina

5,545 words, approx. 19 pages

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Critical Essay by Linda Selzer

10,503 words, approx. 36 pages

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Critical Essay by Stacie Lynn Hankinson

3,288 words, approx. 11 pages

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Critical Essay by Charles J. Heglar

1,495 words, approx. 5 pages

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Critical Essay by Martha J. Cutter

8,282 words, approx. 28 pages

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Critical Essay by Robyn R. Warhol

2,882 words, approx. 10 pages

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Critical Essay by Daniel W. Ross

8,022 words, approx. 27 pages

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Critical Essay by Wendy Wall

7,849 words, approx. 27 pages

10,851 words, approx. 37 pages

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Critical Essay by Priscilla L. Walton

6,539 words, approx. 22 pages

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Critical Essay by Charles L. Proudfit

12,827 words, approx. 43 pages

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Critical Essay by Linda Abbandonato

7,230 words, approx. 25 pages

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Critical Essay by James C. Hall

5,932 words, approx. 20 pages

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Critical Essay by Carole Anne Taylor

9,518 words, approx. 32 pages

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Critical Essay by Peter S. Prescott

603 words, approx. 3 pages

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Critical Essay by Mel Watkins

597 words, approx. 2 pages

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Critical Essay by Elizabeth Bartelme

552 words, approx. 2 pages

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An Analysis of The Color Purple

1,227 words, approx. 5 pages

"I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women. Where do children really come from. It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing... The more I wo... Read more

Feminist Novelist: One of a Kind

2,744 words, approx. 10 pages

The Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple, is a book criticized for its immoral issues, such as incest, rape, and physical abuse. The amazingly detailed text comes from a very active femin... Read more

The Creation of Women's Identities in the Color Purple by Alice Walker

799 words, approx. 3 pages

If we read The Color Purple with 'gender on the agenda' as required we can identify how the form contributes to the impact of the narrative. The Color Purple is a story that unfolds through the writ... Read more

The Color Purple Review

359 words, approx. 2 pages

The Color Purple is about a black woman named Celie who endures a lot of cruelty from men throughout her whole life. This book shows how she changed into a miraculous woman who stands up for what sh... Read more

Celie's "The Color Purple"

818 words, approx. 3 pages

The color purple represents many subjects in this novel. Celie lives a painful life where she is abused by her stepfather and her own husband. The color purple was chosen by Alice Walker because pur... Read more

The Portrayal of Women in "The Color Purple"

1,676 words, approx. 6 pages

"The Colour Purple" is a novel about womanism, slavery, racism and abuse. It was written by Alice Walker who based this novel on her own experiences. She received the Pulitzer for her novel "The Colo... Read more

A Review of The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1,609 words, approx. 6 pages

The Color Purple, a novel by Alice Walker is an accurate description of the life of a black female in racist rural Georgia during the mid 1900's. The main character Celie, with the help of others, l... Read more

Discovery and Self-knowledge

732 words, approx. 3 pages

All three texts I have selected, "The Color Purple", an extract from a girls notebook, and a scene from "Finding Forrester" express the idea that discovery and self knowledge are inseparably part of a... Read more

The Color Purple, A Character Analysis of Harpo

626 words, approx. 3 pages

This essay is going to be based in one of the characters of the book "Colour Purple", which would be Harpo. Harpo is Mr._'s son, and he has two more brothers, and his mother had died. This is why his... Read more

The Color Purple: Reflections Upon Reading

1,228 words, approx. 5 pages

The Color Purple shocked me with the painful and shameful sexual crime committed against young Celie who is raped by who she believes to be her father, while her mother is at the doctor's office. Thi... Read more

"The Color Purple" and Black Boy; Two Very Similar Pieces

1,746 words, approx. 6 pages

"The colour purple" and Black Boy; two very similar pieces "I don't know how to fight, all I know is how to stay alive" said Celie, role played by Whoopi Goldberg in the movie "The Colour Purple" dir... Read more

Symbolism in the Color Purple by Alice Walker

2,057 words, approx. 7 pages

Symbolism is one of the major elements in "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker. The woman's search for something she has never experienced is the symbolization of the mankind's search for love and happ... Read more

What Is the Style and Effect of Nettie's Voice and Language and How Does It Differ from Celie's?

945 words, approx. 4 pages

The Color Purple is one of the most successful and controversial books ever written by a black woman. This epistolary novel is about a black African-American woman called Celie, The story of Celie is ... Read more

The Color Purple

1,202 words, approx. 5 pages

According to the Swiss psychologist, Karl Jung, we are all part of a collective unconscious. This means that we all fit into some archetypal pattern that describes our experiences and the experienc... Read more

Power and Racism in "The Color Purple"

1,335 words, approx. 5 pages

The setting of The Color Purple by Alice Walker is in Georgia sometime between 1910 and 1940. The four main characters of The Color Purple are Celie, Mr. __, Shug Avery, and Nettie. Celie is the prot... Read more

Sexuality and Power in "Woman at Point Zero" and "The Color Purple"

917 words, approx. 4 pages

In "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker, the tone, at the beginning of the book, is very confessional and uninhibited. Therefore, it illustrates Celie's state of mine as very passive. She does not have ... Read more

Female Empowerment in "The Color Purple"

2,193 words, approx. 8 pages

Alice Walker's use of characterization in her novel The Color Purple depicts her main theme of female empowerment and the importance of maintaining an assertive voice. The tyrannical male characters,... Read more

Free Book Notes (1)

The Color Purple

20,319 words, approx. 68 pages

The Color Purple Book Notes is a free study guide on The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Browse the summary below:   Author Biography / Context of the Work   One-Page Plot Summary  ... Read more

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