Ugliness and Beauty in Alice Walkers Color Purple Essay -- Color Purp

Ugliness and Beauty in Walkers The Color Purple When I finished The Color Purple, I cried. I was deeply touched by the story and all of the issues that it addressed. One interrelated theme that reiterates passim the original is that of wickedness and beauty. Celie represents ugliness, and Shug Avery illustrates beauty. The most prominent port that the struggle between ugliness and beauty presents itself in the novel is through Albert, Celies forced husband, and Shugs long-time lover. The characters of Celie and Shug are compared and contrasted throughout the novel, and the reason why Albert, for the majority of the novel, treats the two of them so differently is because of the way they look. Albert non only hates, but beats Celie because she is ugly and she is not Shug. He beat me Celie when you not here, I say. Who do, she Shug say, Albert? Mr. _____, I say. . . . What he beat you for? she ast. For macrocosm me and not you (79). Albert loves Shug because she is beautiful. In addition, Alice Walker views Alberts love of Shug, in spite of her colouring material and his fathers protestations, as a sign of psychic health and, more specifically, a sign of self-love (Winchell 98). However, this self-love that Albert supposedly possesses is only extended to Shug, not to Celie. This is because Shug is the epitome of societys patriarchal definition of a feminine woman. She has perfect unflawed skin, hair that is never out of place, a voluptuous and sensuous (non-fat) body, and the latest clothes and accessories of a model. On first meeting Shug Celie describes, and she dress to kill. She got on a red wool dress and chestful of black beads. A glassed black hat with what look like chickinhawk feathers curve down... ...Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah. untested York Amistad Press, Inc., 1993. Johnson, Yvonne. The Voices of African American Women. modern York Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1998. Smith, Pamela A. Green Lap, Brown Embrace, risque Body The Ecospirituality of Alice Walker. April Cross Currents 2000 (1999) 18 p. Online. Internet. 30 Nov. 1999. unattached http//www.aril.org.smith2.htm. Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York Pocket Books, 1982. Walker, Alice. A South Without Myths. Sojourners Magazine Online (Dec. 1994 - Jan. 1995) 2 p. Online. Internet. 30 Nov. 1999. Available http//www.sojourners.com/soj9412/ 941213.html. Waxman, Barbara Frey. Dancing out of form, dancing into self genre and metaphor in Marshall, Shange, and Walker. Melus 19.3 (Fall 1994) 1-16. Winchell, Donna Haisty. Alice Walker. New York Twayne Publishers, 1992.