Critical Analysis Of Alice Walker

A great poet, essayist, and novelist Alice Walker (b. 1944) is a renowned face on the literary stage of America. Though Walker is an important part of American literature, still, she more specifically belongs to the Afro-American literature. Walker has always been attracted towards the problems of the oppressed and the downtrodden. She has been an active reformist and social worker and has been a part of various reforms and movements organised in favour of the oppressed or the ‘social outcasts’. Being an Afro-American writer it is, but, natural that she vividly represents the culture and the social life of the ‘Black’ people. But even while portraying the ‘blacks’, she is more concerned with the portrayal of the ‘Black Women’. Her focus or

This ‘double oppression’ in the hands of the ‘whites’ as well as the ‘blacks’ has remained a major area of thrust in Walker’s fiction. Thus Alice Walker becomes an important part and parcel of ‘Black Feminism’ too. She has been credited for introducing the word ‘Womanist’ in Afro-American feminism. She portrays the economic hardships and the struggles faced by the African-American women. The dominant themes that have again and again occurred in her novels are racism, sexism, violence, rape, isolation, and a disruption of stereo-typical gender-roles. She has been adamant on turning upside down these traditional and normative gender-specific roles.
Alice Walker started her writing career with some miscellaneous poems, short- stories and essays and then she opted for writing novels. Her first novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland came in 1970; second was Meridian in 1976; but her writing career took flight with her famous as well as controversial novel The Color Purple in 1982. It was with this novel that Alice Walker came into limelight and established her literary reputation. The novel received the

Celie and Nettie are real sisters. They love and care for each other. But Celie was always disapproved by her father while Nettie was ‘the gifted one’. She was allowed to continue her education on Celie’s stake. Celie was forcibly withdrawn from basic school education by her father. It was Nettie who heartily tried to convince her father for Celie’s education. When their father was taking Celie out of the school, Nettie was adamant : “Nettie stood there at the gate holding tight to my hand” (Walker 11). She even brought her school teacher Miss Beasley to convince their father, but all in vain. However Nettie never gave up. When Celie married Mr. _______, Nettie ran away from her father’s house and came to live with Celie. There, too, whenever she got a chance, she tried to make Celie conscious of her rights. She encouraged her and kept on saying “You got to fight. You got to fight” (Walker 18). Whenever she got a chance she taught Celie something or the other