Interaction Of Love, Oppression And Rebellion In Seeking Identities

Alice Walker (1944- ) is one of the distinguished black writers in the contemporary literary circle. Since 1968, she has published two collections of poems: Once (1968), Revolutionary Petunias (1973); six novels: The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976), The Color Purple (1982), The Temple of My Familiar (1989), Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998); the collection of her own essays: In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983). Alice Walker's works not only touch upon racial and sexual discrimination, but also describe the oppression of class, which reflect the common issues of human beings. The Color Purple is Walker's representative novel. It won great popularity among readers and critics after its publication in 1982. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award in 1983, which establish her irreplaceable position in American literary history. In 1985, the novel was adapted into the screenplay and was directed by the famous American director Steven Spielberg. In the end, this film was awarded with an Oscar nomination. In The Color Purple, Walker shows the living condition of black women under racial and sexual oppression. She gives the detail description of the protagonist Celie's growing process — from her numbness to awakening, from rebellion to independence. In the end, Celie finds her inner and outer identity. Walker demonstrates the important influence of the interaction of love, oppression and rebellion on the main black male and female characters' personality and the pursuit of their respective identities after emancipation from patriarchy. This thesis is intended to explore this subject in Alice Walker's The Color Purple in the following four aspects.Firstly, it reviews the life experience of Alice Walker and the influence of social background on her writing. It refers to Jung's psychoanalysis to analyze Celie's psychological problems and her inner change. Therefore, it demonstrates that the lesbian love between Celie and Shug helps them to find their inner and outer identities.Secondly, it analyzes the personality of other two female characters, Sophia and Nettie. The two women who possess the rebellious spirit use love to encourage and help Celie. And Celie also uses love to handle her conflict with Sophia and helps Sophia to find her identity. Celie's love supports Nettie's faith to realize her self and find her national identity.Thirdly, it demonstrates that the overthrow of patriarchy not only benefits women but also brings merits to men through analyzing the twomale characters Mr.___ and Harpo's psyche and the reasons for theirpsychological problems. Mr.___'s oppression on Celie and her rebellion, andHarpo's oppression on Sophia and her rebellion not only help these women to walk on the way to achieve self-awakening and to seek identities, but also help those men to change themselves and find their identities. Therefore, it tries to establish a new and ideal relationship between men and women.Finally, it attempts to analyze black people's psyche, the whites' mental control on the blacks and the psychological roots of patriarchy. It shows that the black nation as an ascending nation can rely on the love interaction among family members to settle their domestic problems and then to spread this interaction to the whole black nation and finally win the rights that they deserve.