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.

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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?

The Color Purple

How do you say that a book is a wonderful book? For me, it’s when everything from the book keeps ‘haunting’ me long after I finish it. It’s when I feel quite affected (in a good way of course) by the book, that it somehow changes a bit of me—what I think and what I feel. And that’s how I feel about this book: The Color Purple.

At the beginning, I thought this book is just going to be a story of pains and sorrows, racisms, and hard times for African-American women; a kind of story that you would perhaps put down halfway because it is too sad and frustrating to keep on reading. But I was wrong. On the contrary, The Color Purple—although it did tells stories about pains and sorrows—it tells more about love and friendship, faith and hope. And Alice Walker has written them all in a series of letters. Through that letters, we came to know about Celie and Nettie—the two sisters who love each other even though their lives have been separated, and all they must have gone through to keep their hopes on each other, in the middle of a turbulence era in America in 1910-1940s.

I love how Alice Walker emphasizes many remarkable things within the letters which were written by a non-educated African-American woman like Celie. I mean, those letters are not just ordinary letters, they contain deeper and stronger meanings, and a lot of life philosophies too sometimes. For example, the first sentence that opens the story: ‘You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy’. I detect terror or shame in it, as if the person who has written it has done something very wrong or shameful—a big secret—that she couldn’t tell anybody but God. What a great way to start a novel! It already speaks the overall theme of the story, because that’s how Celie must have felt nearly her entire life.

Unlike Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin—where Uncle Tom was portrayed almost like a saint, Celie is not that ideal, not perfect. However I love Celie better than Uncle Tom because she’s just an ordinary human being just like most of us, who can be bitter and weak upon the tortures of life. At first Celie seemed to be faithful to God, she poured her sorrows into her letters to Him. She didn’t run away like Nettie, she didn’t fight like Sofia. She just gone through every pains she got from her Pa and then from her husband, Mr. _______. However at certain point, that was when she knew that Mr. _____ has hidden Nettie’s letter from her, she stopped writing to God, and began to write to Nettie instead. It’s interesting to read how Celie felt about God at that time, from her conversation with Shug:

Celie: “What God do for me?”

Shug: “Celie! He gave you life, good health, and a good woman that love you to death.”

Celie: “Yeah, and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again. Anyhow, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgetful and lowdown.”

Shug: “Miss Celie, you better hush. God might hear you.”

Celie: “Let ‘im hear me. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.”

Well, there were times when we were in hard times, we might think the same way, that God has forgotten us and left us, so we also left God. It’s not strange, because—like Celie—we are all weak. At her hard times, Celie turned to the one she love the most, her sister Nettie and her best friend Shug. It’s them (especially Nettie) who have saved Celie from throwing God away for good. Because in people you love, and love you in return, you will find God’s presence. And at the end (to my joy!), Celie can finally repair her relationship with God in her last letter. We also experience the ups and downs of our faith, and now we know—thanks to Celie—that the only way to keep us from falling is to open our heart for love.

The same thing happened to Mr. ______. His philosophy is quite deep, and I think, very interesting:

“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 accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, the morel love.”  

There are several things that I don’t get quite well, though. For instance, why did the African reject all the missionaries, although they were also African (Samuel, Corrine and Nettie)? And why they dislike Africans that had been sold for slavery to America? Is that because of their being narrow minded?

And why do you think Celie kept calling his husband with Mr. ________? I think Alice Walker wants to emphasize how women’s status upon men’s at that time. Men have full authorities to women, that even after their marriage, Mr. _______ placed himself as a master, and Celie as a slave. Or, it might be that Celie hated his husband so much that she can’t spell his name, as if to say.. hey, he who used to beat me and treat me like a slave is not a friend, so I won’t call him as if he’s my friend. Because at the end when everything got better for Celie, she could finally call Mr. ________ with just ‘Albert’. What do you think?

I have also been wondering about the color purple itself. Has it a certain meaning that Alice Walker wanted to tell us? Or is it just Celie’s favorite color besides red? I remember that Celie asked for color purple or red when Shug brought her to a store to buy cloth for her first dress. The cover of the copy I read (borrowed from a friend) is also intriguing me, as it has purple flowers on the grayscale image of a black woman. I have discussed it here.

Last but not least, through The Color Purple we can see the danger of racism. I learned it from the scene of Sofia and Miss Eleanor Jane, when Eleanor Jane tried to make Sofia say something good about his baby. Eleanor Jane could not understand why Sofia can’t treat her just as a friend. Sofia knew that Eleanor Jane loves her despite of their different races, but there will always be an invisible curtain that separates them. And I think it would take a very long time too before that invisible curtain could vanish completely from our society.

Five stars for The Color Purple and Alice Walker!

Title: The Color Purple

Author: Alice Walker

Publisher: A Harvest International Edition

Published: 2007

Pages: 294

A special thanks to Bettina from Liburuak blog, who has hosted this lovely read along. Without it, I might not have been found the greatness of Alice Walker's writing, as well as the great female character such as Celie...

*This is my 1st review for The Classic Bribe 2012*

Weigh in Wednesday (5): Poetry Vs. Prose

It’s the fifth Weigh in Wednesday weekly meme of Lauren that I have been joining so far, and I think this week’s topic offers the easiest choice for me. I never like poetry, so my choice is 100% on prose. Poetry is beautiful, but I just love to read the flowing of words that build the interpretation in prose, rather than enjoying the poetry rhymes before going back again to find the meaning J. Anyway, I’m a more logical person than romantic one, so I prefer literature with deep meanings than only a flowery words.

So, which side of you, poetry or prose? Let me know your thoughts…

And if you love memes, please check out my weekly meme : Character Thursday

The Color Purple, Between Post-Modernism and Contemporary: A Classics Challenge May

Although it is not clearly stated in the book, I believe that The Color Purple is first set around 1910 or 1920, and stretched to the beginning of civil rights movements, around 1950s. However, I prefer to put this work of Alice Walker by the values she brought at the time she wrote this novel, rather than the time setting. So, although the original time set is within the first half of 20^th century, I think the best place to put this book is between the post-modernism and contemporary literary movement. Post-modernism is a historical period that began in the 1940s, a style of literature, philosophy, art, and architecture, or the situation of Western society in a late capitalist or post-capitalist age. Social issues as writers align with feminist & ethnic groups, are among this movement.

At the time Walker wrote The Color Purple, America has been struggling with both African-American racism and men-women discrimination and gender minority. The Color Purple is also the sign of African-American literature rising. Besides Alice Walker, Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Hurston were among the female authors that brought up the same values as The Color Purple. Their works shows the hardships of African-American women.

The story of Celie (female protagonist of this book), her hard times under the dominancy of his step father and husband, and the story of African people under the white people power truly reflect the focus of the post-modernism movement, especially the rising of African-American. As a woman, these issues are quite intriguing and emotional, so I might read other similar works, such as Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings in the future.

Celie on The Color Purple: Character Thursday (13)

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.

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This week I pick a wonderful female character:

Celie

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Being a poor and uneducated African-American woman in 1910-1940s, Celie had been struggling in her life as a female in the domination of males. First abused and raped by her step father, and then abused and treated badly by her husband, a Mr. _______, yet Celie survived. At first she put her hopes on to God, through series of letters addressed to God, which became sort of her diary. After being separated from her younger sister Nettie, Celie did not have anyone to share her love. So, when a female singer with an independent mind named Shug Avery came into her life, she fell in love with her in no time, despite the fact that Shug is Mr. ______’s lover. From then on, it is Shug who became like a mother to Celie.

I think Celie loves Shug not only because Shug was a compassionate person to Celie, but because in Shug, Celie saw a person (or a woman) she’d like to become: assertive, independent, brave, sensual and attractive. One reason why Celie wasn’t quite jealous when Shug and Mr. _____ slept together under her nose, was because Celie never loved or even hated her husband.

Thanks to Shug, Celie learned not only passively accepted what men done to her, but to fight back. Her first attempt was by leaving Mr. _____ and moved to live with Shug in a new city. At the new place, Shug planted thr idea to build a business of producing pants to Celie. This was the first sign of her new life. When later on she came back, she was a different woman, stronger and braver. She was no more just a housemaid to Mr. ________, she was a companion. She can sit and talk equally to men. This only shows that friendships between females are very important, and often has a great impact on a woman’s life.

Besides Celie’s personal character swift, it is also interesting to see the change in her relationship with God. Although at first she has a strong devotion and can talk to God in her letters, in a certain point of her great disappointment, she run away from Him. This was when she began to address her letters to Nettie. However, when things finally got better for Celie, she returned to God in her final letter. It’s so typically us, human. We looked for Him in our difficult times to look for hopes, but we weren’t patience enough to wait till the hope come, and just runaway from Him.

I love Celie, the main character of The Color Purple. She is not a heroine who’s done heroic acts, she is just like most of us with all her weaknesses. Yet, she can survived through hard times, thank to God (yes, even when she runaway from God, God still took care of her through her dear friends: Shug, Sofia and Nettie).

Whoopi Goldberg, I think, is a perfect choice to perform Celie

So, who’s your Character Thursday of this week?

Weigh in Wednesday (4): Novellas vs Anthologies

Before weighing, this is the definition of both stuffs we are discussing today for Lauren’s weekly meme:

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel.

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts. In genre fiction anthology is used to categorize collections of shorter works such as short stories and short novels, usually collected into a single volume for publication.

[source: Wikipedia]

Actually both novella and anthology are not my first choices of fiction, I love novel for a long reading and offering complex stories or deeper meaning. However, if I must choose one, then I’ll pick novella. At least novella consists of one single story, and sometimes being short does not mean it is going to be light. Two novellas that I have read so far are both classics works: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I don’t quite like John Steinbeck, but A Christmas Carol is certainly a good book and worth reading despite its shortness (only 100 something pages). With novellas, I think, I just eager to read more. It’s like when you just found a beautiful places, but you know that you only have ten minutes to stay. Only that? But I want more…! That’s what I feel with short novel or novella.

And how about anthology? Well, stories in anthology are certainly much shorter than novella. But again, sometimes you’d find a gripping short story despite of its shortness. For example, short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. He is so genius, that in that very short a story, he could send chill to your bone! For this kind of short stories, I certainly don’t want more! LOL… However, I kinda like anthology IF ONLY it’s a compilation of works from ONE author. I dislike anthology from several or many different authors, even though they have one same theme. Authors, especially great ones, have their own specific style, and when you try to combine several authors like that, the uniqueness will fade away.

So, in short, I prefer novella than anthology. And I won’t ever read an anthology of more than one author. What about you? Are you with novella or anthology side?...

And if you love memes, please check out my weekly meme : Character Thursday

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes

[conclusion in English is in the bottom of this post] Buku ini berisi kumpulan cerita pendek kasus-kasus kecil yang ditangani Sherlock Holmes, yang dicatat dan dituliskan oleh rekannya, Dr. Watson. Ke 12 kisah ini dipilih Watson karena keunikannya, dan sebagian besar merupakan kasus yang nampaknya rumit, padahal pemecahannya sedeana saja. Kasus-kasusnya bervariasi, dari saat Watson masih berbagi apartemen dengan Holmes di Baker Street hingga saat Watson sudah menikah dan menempati rumah sendiri namun masih sering menemani Holmes dalam penyelidikannya.

Yang paling menarik mungkin adalah kasus pertama, A Scandal in Bohemia. Klien Holmes adalah seorang Pangeran penerus tahta kerajaan Bohemia yang pernah menjalin hubungan asmara dengan artis opera cantik bernama Irene Adler. Sekarang ia ingin mendapatkan kembali foto mereka berdua yang kini disembunyikan Irene, yang dikhawatirkan akan menjadi skandal bila terungkap. Kasus ini menjadi sangat menarik karena di sini Holmes berhadapan dengan musuh yang seimbang, yakni Irene Adler. Irene bukan hanya cantik namun juga cerdik, dan menurut Watson hanya Irene-lah wanita yang pernah memberikan pengaruh dalam hidup Holmes, meski mungkin bukan dalam hal romansa namun lebih kepada kecerdikannya yang dikagumi Holmes. Selanjutnya Holmes beberapa kali menyinggung tentang Irene dengan menyebutnya sebagai 'wanita itu'.

Sedangkan kasus yang akan membuat anda paling jantungan mungkin adalah The Adventure of The Specled Band, yang mengisahkan sebuah keluarga dengan ayah dan dua anak perempuan tirinya. Si ayah pernah berkelana ke Asia, dan kini hidup terisolir. Saat anak gadis sulungnya akan menikah, terjadi sebuah tragedi. Si gadis meninggal padahal tak mungkin ada orang lain masuk ke kamarnya. Yang lebih aneh lagi adalah dua kata yang diteriakkannya sebelum menghembuskan napas yang terakhir: speckled band! Apa maksudnya? Sebuah teka-teki yang membutuhkan keahlian analisis dan deduksi setaraf seorang Sherlock Holmes untuk memecahkannya. Yang jelas ketegangan pada detik-detik menunggu 'speckled band' itu benar-benar memacu adrenalin!

Selain itu ada kasus yang melibatkan pembalasan dendam Ku Klux Klan yang lumayan mengerikan. Kasus ini menonjol karena Holmes harus berpacu dengan waktu untuk menghindarkan kematian calon korban berikutnya. Kengerian tiap kali kita mendengar atau membaca tentang sepak terjang KKK ini lumayan terasa di sini.

Meski keahlian Holmes sangat mengagumkan, namun kurasa Conan Doyle kurang menunjukkan sisi manusiawi Holmes di buku ini. Seperti yang ditulis Watson tentang Holmes, yang ia ibaratkan sebagai sebuah mesin,

“He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position.”

Conclusion:

Being the only short stories collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which was included in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, of course The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes has been quite intriguing for me.

Overall, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is varied from boring cases, to an exotic case (A Scandal in Bohemia), and suspenseful ones. I can get to know better about Holmes (by personal character and by his methods) from this book, however I still feel the lack of emotional tight in it. Perhaps it’s because this book is a collection of short stories, or perhaps Conan Doyle has written (through Watson) the stories in a formal and descriptive style, that it feels like I'm reading a report, instead of stories.

After reading this book, I can’t but compare Holmes with the works of Agatha Christie. Christie was more focus on characters who are involved in the cases. It is how the conflicts were built, as if we were involved emotionally inside the scene. Then from there, the detectives build their analysis. In Doyle’s works, he often uses narratives (most of them were narrated by Watson, although there are several which were narrated by Holmes himself, and the rest by third persons). I guess that's what makes Holmes stories seems dry and emotionless, despite the greatness of the deduction made ​​by the master of reasoner and 'father' of the next generations of detective stories, Sherlock Holmes. Good, but emotionless.

Three pipes for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, are the special gift I’d like to give to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his 153^rd  birthday which is today, May 22^nd, 2012. Happy birthday Sir, we are thanking you for bringing such a famous detective and great cases to our literary world for over a century!

Title: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Fomat: e-book

Publisher: Project Gutenberg