Harris 1 Dionte Harris ENGL301 Sect 0201 Dr.

David Wyatt 11 November 2013 Celies Spiritual Awakening in The Color Purple You better not never tell nobody but GodI dont write to God no more. Miss Celie clings to her religion. When her father forces her to physically keep quiet about the things that happen to her, she shares her story, fighting to remain being seen as good, by writing letters to God. These letters to God have gotten her through accounts of incestuous molestation, her father selling her to her husband, being a battered a wife, and even finding out that the man she called Pa is not her real father. God was the only rock Celie could lean on. However, Celies faith wears thin when she finds out that Albert, her husband, has intercepted the letters that Nettie, her sister, has been sending her, and she decides to stop writing to God, deciding that God must be sleep. The first person that Celie articulates to that she no longer writes to, or believes in, God is Shug. When Shug asks, What happened to God? we get one of the most intimate scenes between Celie and Shug in which they discuss their views on God and religion. Through this discussion, Shug teaches Celie the difference between being given a God and defining as well as finding God for yourself. Celie holds a one-dimensional view of religion. She has the contention that if you do not go to church or live according to the Bible, then you are not religious. Celie initially wonders why Shug, who she semi-playfully calls a devil, is even concerned about her recently lost connection with God. However, Shug assures her that she is, indeed, as religious as any person

Harris 2 that she has encountered in church who harasses religion. She tells Celie that if God loves her, then she doesnt have to go to church, sing in the choir, or feed the preacher because she can do other things to please God like lay back and just admire stuff. Shug is awakening Celie to a different form of spirituality, showing her that religion is not as black-and-white as she has been raised to believe. Shug purposely makes Celie uncomfortable with her casual talk of religion, Celie refers to it as blasphemous, to exhibit that if God is as loving as we believe him to be, then we do not have to live a certain way to please him. All God wants for us to do is to be happy and enjoy life. Shug says that you can just relaxand praise God by liking what you likeGod love everything that you love so Celie can stop attempting to be good, which is stunting her development and growth, and begin to actually live and enjoy live. Shug is arguing that God, primarily, wants us to be happy, not good. Shug then ask Celie what does her God look like. This throws Celie, and us as readers, by surprise because we all have a sense of how God is portrayed to look. So for Shug to ask makes us also question what our God looks like; thereby, turning us to give a response, most likely similar to Celies. Celie describes her God as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed male, her physical opposite. Shug then scoffs, upsetting Celie, and says no wonder he dont seem to listen to your prayers. Shug argues that this is the God that Celie, and other African Americans, was spoonfed in church. The Bible that mentions whites doing one thing and another, andcolored folksgetting cursed. This is the God, along with his Bible, that Caucasian Americans gave African Americans in order to have them continue to praise, idolize, and be lesser than the white patriarch. Shug sarcastically asks Celia, does the mayor listen to anything colored say? to analogize the god that she prays to the common white citizen. Shug furthers this comparison with I know white people never listen to colored. If they do, they only listen long enough to be able

Harris 3 to tell you what to do. And since God cannot, or we have been taught that he does not, literally talk to us, he does not listen to us, he has, as Celie described, been sleep. Moreover, Shugs intense question makes readers question who it is, if anybody, that we pray to. We become students, along with Celie, in the lesson that Shug is giving, and we have to question Are we like Celie and we believe in an image that has been given to us, or do we recognize a God that is similar to us. Moreover, how do we believe in and identify with a God that looks nothing like us? If God is the ultimate confidant, then we would imagine him to look like our most trusted person: ourselves. Yet so many people believe in a God that looks nothing like them, someone that when Shug noticed, she lost interest in. By forcing Celie, and us, to actually verbalize what our God looks like, Shug forces us to confront the roots of our current ideology. Moreover, she ignites a realization that until our God is someone that we can identify with we will continue to be mad cause he dontlisten to [our] prayers. After awakening Celie, and us, to different types of spirituality, and causing us to realize that we have been praying to a false, manmade, image of God, Shug teaches how to find God. She explains, God is inside youyou come into the world with God. Moreover, that the only way to find God is to search for it within yourself. God will not be the image that you see in a painting at church. Moreover, she adds, God aint a he or a she, but a It. Shugs calling God an It provokes a natural what? but Shug continues with her point that God is everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that youve found it. Only at the end of Shugs description of what God is to her, we can realize the lesson that she has been teaching: that God is whatever we want it to be. Whatever gives us that unexplainable feeling all over our bodies, and leaves us feeling happy and content, that is God. Celie, and us, has a hard time believing accepting that God is an it, because this is not a lesson that she can just

Harris 4 be told and fully understand; this understanding only comes from experience. And experience is something that Celie, ironically, has a lot of, but not enough of. Until she, and the reader, has gone through enough within herself, she will be able to grasp what Shug means by calling God an It. Shug continues by enumerating the things that have been God for her: trees, air, birds, and other people. All of these things have at one time have given her that special connection, and it was only when she found God within herself that she could truly notice and appreciate the God within other things. Through Celies loss of religion, we learn of Shugs, unexpected, quiet, deep-rooted spirituality. Shug teaches Celie not to give up on God, for that is wrong to do, but to forget the image of God that she has clung to her whole life. However, Shug is not attempting to replace Celies image of God with another; Shug is rather awakening Celie to realize that the God that she believed in, was not her God. Celie struggles with her relationship with God from this point, she only writes to Nettie. However, she exhibits her final understanding of Shugs lesson by addressing her last letter Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God.