Purple

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I'm feeling quite purple at the moment. Currently I'm wearing purple pants, drinking a purple berry soy shake, and meditating on The Color Purple. The pants don't fit, the drink is kind of gross, but the book is just right. I was just thinking about how Celie becomes the maker and deliverer of pants. "Wearing the pants" is supposed to show who has the power in a relationship/ who has masculine or independent qualities. These are the qualities the Celie has always lacked, and are a direct contrast to her position at the beginning of the novel when she was a subservient, used and abused woman.

The Invisible Man is such a contrast to The Color Purple. It is amazing the difference of reading a man's writing versus a woman's. Although both Walker and Ellison have similar themes of oppression and being the "mule of the world" Ellison's work is more descriptive of a brutal violence. There are fights and mugging and sick pure hatred described in vivid detail. The Color Purple is violent, yes, but I think it comes off less violent based on the speaker of the novel being pure hearted and the language being conversational. Ellison writes without a limit to the mental and physical range of the human experience. He takes you from an indifferent violent mugging, to philosophical ponderings, to a lust-filled nude dace scene, to animalistic fighting, back to a dignified speech. The violence in The Color Purple is fairly consistent throughout. The woman's writing style is more characterized by pain that sinks in, but is not said; the man's is characterized by pain that is felt and said, but does not sink in.