Manifestation of Humiliation and the Gift of Healing: Alice Walker's the Colour Purple

Abstract

Shelley in The Revolt of Islam     Alice Walker's stormy 1982 novel The Colour Purple (New York : Washington Square Press, 1982) chronicles the struggle of several black women in Georgia, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 and the American Book Award in 1985. Alice walker is a Georgia-born author, poet and the first black woman ever to receive the award for fiction. The Colour Purple unleashes a storm of reception which is excellently written as a black cultural representation and also intrinsically woven with pathos and humour, brilliantly laced with excellent characters. Walker explore themes, that highlights the human conditions: the power of voice, the power of strong female relationships, the disruption of traditional gender roles, loss of innocence and faith, racial discrimination and oppression. In spite of all the hurdles, Walker examines the relationship between men and women, women with women and between parents and children. The Colour Purple takes the reader to a sojourn journey where the characters suffer fromviolence, racial discrimination,and sexual oppression to discover love, marriage, family and the truth as a spirituality of healing elements as an answer to their manifestations of humiliation.