Quickwrite- The Color Purple

Celie is obviously religious. Then again, taking in the way the book is written and the way the people act, I think everyone was religious back then. You can get the general feeling of the time period from the quote, "Mr. _____ marry me to take care of his children. I marry him cuz my daddy made me. I don't love Mr. _____ and he don't love me," (Page 63). Forced marriage is a very old tradition that almost completely ended in the early nineteen hundreds (save for a few shot gun weddings). Thus, she probably didn't have any other choice but to be at least somewhat religious.

However, the only time she talks about religion or God is A) when she talks about being pregnant at church and B) when she actually says "Dear God". I don't think they had journals back then (or, at least, they weren't widely used), so this might just be her way of saying "Dear Diary". At the very beginning of the book it says, "You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy." I think this is her father speaking to her. He told her to only talk to God about these things, and so she began writing letter to God, informing him of the horrors of her life.

So, in summary of my opinion of the religious aspect of The Color Purple, is that God isn't much more than someone to talk to. In fact, (don't read this next bit if you aren't at least two third through with the book), later on she even rejects God and begins writing letters to her sister, Nettie, instead. Suddenly, there's someone else to spill her heart to and she doesn't have to rely on a faith that she probably wasn't even completely certain of the entire time, anyway. This proves that, while she was writing to God, she wasn't even fully sure that he existed- she just desperately needed a place to record her thoughts and the passing moments of the history of her life.