Thursday, May 31, 2012

Mr. _____ on The Color Purple: Character Thursday (14)

Character Thursday is a weekly meme that requires you to post on every Thursday, your character choice from the book you are reading or you have finished with. It can be the protagonist or the antagonist, characters that you love the most or hate the most. You can pick any book of any genre as you like. Please feel free to grab the button below and paste it in your post. Last but not least, please add URL of your post in the linky at the bottom of this post.



Fanda Classiclit

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Mr. _____ (Albert)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker


You might be wondering, why I didn’t mention the actual name of my Character Thursday. Well, that is how Alice Walker wrote about this character from the perspective of Celie, the main female character of this book. From the first time Mr. _____ appeared, I have already disliked him. When he came to Celie’s house at the first time, it seemed that he was just looking for a woman for his household, not for his wife. He actually picked Nettie for his wife, however after Nettie run away, he must satisfied himself with Celie. So from the beginning, it’s neither love nor attraction.

Danny Glover as Albert (Mr. _____)

Being a husband, Mr. _____ was far from ideal. He often beats Celie even when Celie did nothing. He was harsh in bed, and never treated Celie as a wife nor a woman. And the worst of it, he was openly having an affair with his lover, Shug Avery, without hiding the fact from Celie. For Mr. _____ Celie was just someone to look after the children and do the household. That’s all. Why did he do that? I presumed that it was the habit or the culture among people at that time. Or perhaps, being a minority, Mr. ____ (and other African-American at that time) was used to be under oppression of white people, so that they need a kind of impingement from the feeling of their inferiority. They found a need to show someone (or themselves) that they still have the control over their life. So, Mr. _____ beat and did rude things to Celie, who (he thought) did not have the power to fight.

However, Mr. _____ has wrongly judged Celie. His wife turned out to be a brave and strong woman—thanks to the love she had and received. With the help of her best friend, Celie slowly built her own life. She moved from Mr. _____ house and started her sewing business. I think the fact that Celie had the courage to leave him, quite struck Mr. _____. And on this point, he changed for the better. He started to contemplate about his life, and here is his conclusion:

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accidents. But you never know nothing more about the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, the morel love.

I know it’s quite confusing if you haven’t read the whole story, but what Mr. _____ (or we can call him ‘Albert’ now—the name which Celie had finally the courage to mention after her ‘rise’) wanted to say is, that after Celie left, he done a review of his own life, and finally decided to rebuilt it after he learned about love. After the transformation, Albert treated Celie as a friend, they could speak and even sew together for hours. Albert also offered Celie to renew their marriage.

So, Celie’s transformation actually brought another transformation in Albert too. What a wonderful character we have here, but what about you, who’s your Character Thursday for this week?



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