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The Color Purple Study Guide

by Alice Walker

The Color Purple is a book by Alice Walker. The Color Purple study guide contains a biography of Alice Walker, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

The Color Purple is an epistolary novel, made up of letters written by Celie to God and by Nettie to Celie. At the start of the novel, Celie is a fourteen-year-old, vulnerable, abused black girl who addresses her letters to “Dear God.” Thirty years later, at the end of the novel, she has forged her own life despite a male-dominated and racially prejudiced society. She fights her way through life and questions everything she has been taught. Her most ambitious challenge is to remake her idea of God as an old, white, bearded male—her antithesis—into a God who encompasses everything and lives within her.

In Celie’s first letter to God, we learn that she has been raped by her father, Alfonso. Alfonso told her that she must not tell anybody what…

Read the full The Color Purple Summary

• The Color Purple Summary
• About The Color Purple
• Character List
• Glossary of Terms
• Major Themes
• Summary and Analysis of Section 1
• Summary and Analysis of Section 2
• Summary and Analysis of Section 3
• Summary and Analysis of Section 4
• Summary and Analysis of Section 5
• Summary and Analysis of Section 6
• Summary and Analysis of Section 7
• Summary and Analysis of Section 8
• Summary and Analysis of Section 9
• The Film Version of 1985
• Related Links on The Color Purple
• Suggested Essay Questions
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 1
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 2
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 3
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 4
• Author of ClassicNote and Sources

• The Color Purple: Major Themes
• The Color Purple: Essays
• The Color Purple: Questions
• The Color Purple: Purchase the Novel and Related Material
• Alice Walker: Biography