CERs on The Color Purple Background Info.

Objective: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts,
and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis
of content.

Directions: Write two well-informed paragraphs (2 CERs) that show your understanding of two
different topics (choose from topics below) surrounding the background information and The
Color Purple text. Prove your claims to be true by using poignant and relevant information
(accurately cited in MLA format) from The Color Purple and your background research notes.

Family Dynamics
Analyze different examples of families, the ways they interact, how they treat
one another, and different familial relationships.

Female Empowerment
Positivity, sisterhood, support, strength under harsh circumstances.

Female Disempowerment
Negativity, abuse (sexual, verbal, physical)

Masculine Norms/Behavior
What does it mean to “be a man” in this time and place? What is and is not
acceptable behavior? How do men view women?

Ideology on Sex
Celie vs. Shug; male vs. female; what does Celie allude to about her sexual
preference?

Social Injustice Impact

Big picture issues and their impact on clients (within systems), -isms, phobias,
rights and privilege
Female Disempowerment
Negativity, abuse (sexual, verbal, physical)
The females in The Color Purple by Alice Walker don’t get to express any of their thoughts it’s
as if the saying “You are to be seen but not heard” came from the early twentieth- century
because the female says one thing the male gender doesn’t agree with the female is going to
abused one way or another physically, mentally, or emotionally. In The Color Purple Celie, the
protagonist, a female character, that has faced abuse all of her “He beat me today cause he say I
winked at a boy in church” (Walker 5). While Celie is forced to marry a cruel man, the man’s son
“Harpo ast his daddy why he beat me. Mr__ say, cause she my wife” (Walker 22). The females in
this book are told how to live their lives and if they don’t obey the man, they are to be abused. If
the female is to say anything a male figure doesn’t approve of, the female is likely to be beaten
and hurt because the female “stepped out of line.” If females didn’t go on to marry or the female
is to strong and powerful the female would be looked down upon and “bullied” by the men and
even the women. In this time period, females could do no right for their society, they were to be
seen and not heard and allow for the angry man to rape her when he had a bad day. The world is
always going to be a cruel place for a female to live in, but in the early twentieth-century life was
hell to be a female.

Masculine Norms/Behavior
What does it mean to “be a man” in this time and place? What is and is not
acceptable behavior? How do men view women?
To be a man in the early twentieth century meant to be the head of the household, the wife and
children were to fear the man, being born a man meant luck, the man could be the abuser rather
than being the one abused. “Just say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t. First he put his
thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around. Then he grab hold my titties. Then he push
his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up
and git used to it” (Walker 1). Celie’s father rapes her as Celie’s mother is on her deathbed, the
father doesn’t view Celie as a human, he views her as an object, as something he can throw
around because as a man in the early twentieth century, the man was to be allowed anything of
the women. “ He took it. He took it while I was sleeping. Kilt it out there in the woods. Kill this
one too, it he can” (Walker 2). When the father messes up after raping his own daughter and
knocking her up instead of facing the consequences he acts as if it’s Celie’s fault as if she is the
“whore” who is getting knocked up by men while in reality, Celie isn’t even safe in the comfort
of her own home. The men are dirty animals who think they deserve whatever they want, so they
rape and abuse the females and children in their life and cheat and become ignorant disgusting
assholes, all while the female takes the beating and doesn’t say a word. Men are dirty and
disgusting and see women as nothing but something they can rape because they are looked upon
as cows that “...ain’t fresh tho… She spoiled. Twice” (Walker 7). Men will always be disgusting
and conceded as they feel they can rule the world where really they should all have their d*cks
cut off.