the color purple lit chart

• Celie: 'I don't know, say Sofia. Maybe I won't go. Deep down I still love Harpo, but—he just makes me real tired. She yawn. Laugh. I need a vacation, she say.'
• Sofia and Harpo's marriage

  Forms a counterpoint to Celie's marriage to Mr. ____ and to Celie's burgeoning relationship with Shug
• Sofia controls Harpo physically, often berating him and beating him
• This causes Harpo to want to retaliate, to eat so much that he grows in size
• Sofia understands that Harpo merely wants to control her, so she does what she can to imagine a world where she does not rely on any man
• The idea of a "vacation" from anything in the novel is, for the characters involved, an inherently humorous wish
• Most characters do not have the resources to take a break at all from their working lives
• Celie's imaginative life is rich, and she longs, deep down, to live with Shug, and to throw off the burden of caring for Mr. ____
• At this point in the text, these can only be wishes and fantasies - not transferable into reality
• Celie: 'What Sofia gon say bout what you doing to her house? I ast. Spose she and the children come back. Where they gon sleep.'
• Harpo: 'They ain't coming back, say Harpo, nailing together planks for a counter.'
• Harpo decides that he'd like to run a bar, or "juke joint," in order to host singers - and, more importantly for him, to "assert himself" as a man in the community
• Celie realizes that Harpo has long been worried he is not man enough, or that only Sofia might love him or desire him sexually
• Harpo's construction of the juke joint is, therefore, in part an announcement of his own masculinity, and his attempt to present himself as desirable to the women of the community
• Buster Broadnax: 'I don't know, say the prizefighter. This sound mighty much like some ole uncle Tomming to me.'
• Shug Avery: 'Well, she say, Uncle Tom wasn't call Uncle for nothing.'
• Shug is extraordinarily clever, and wishes to release Sofia from her imprisonment by whatever means are available to her
• Shug recognizes that one role white men and women are comfortable with, for African Americans, is that of maid or servant
• Shug does what she can to court the favor and approval of white society, causing the prizefighter to argue that Shug is enticing Squeak, and indirectly Sofia, to perform for and act obsequious toward white society
• Shug maintains her composure and her ability to joke even in the most serious of circumstances - and nevertheless is capable of helping Sofia to improve her lot despite the punishment she is sentenced to in prison
• Sofia: 'I just can't understand it. Why we ain't already kill them off.'
• Celie: 'Too many to kill off, I say. Us outnumbered from the start.'
• Sofia's tone suggests she does not mean seriously to suggest that African Americans ought to kill the white families that oppress them
• Sofia seems to understand that only a very, very profound change in the nature of black and white interaction in the South would upend many centuries of prejudice and active discrimination against African Americans
• Celie recognizes that American society has been structured around white experience, making it extraordinarily hard to imagine a world in which those advantages are not taken into account
• Celie is committed to improving her own life, but she recognizes just how much stands in the path of her own progress, and the progress of African Americans more generally
• Celie: 'She singing all over the country these days. Everybody know her name. She know everybody, too. Know Sophie Tucker, know Duke Ellington, know folks I ain't never heard of. And money. She make so much money she don't know what to do with it.'
• Shug's success on the touring circuit in the South is one of the emergent features of the novel
• Shug's development as a character involves her getting more and more recognition for the quality of her singing
• Celie has long been proud of Shug's accomplishments - indeed, she has held her in awe
• Shug encourages Celie to pursue her own passions
• Celie's realization that Shug has gotten what she wants from life by going out into the world and asserting herself, coupled with Celie's continued journaling, causes her to approach her own enjoyment in a more proactive way
• Nettie: 'But God, I miss you, Celie. I think about the time you laid yourself down for me. I love you with all my heart.'
• Nettie's letters back to Celie document the "other side" of the narrative
• Nettie has escaped the harsh conditions of the rural South, where Celie continues to live
• Nettie raises Adam and Olivia, Celie's biological children, as her own adopted children
• Nettie finds, in the care of the Reverend Samuel and his wife Corrine, a kind of sustained, nurturing family environment that was not available to her in her family home
• Celie's journal is braided into the narrative with Nettie's unanswered letters back to Celie
• The fact that Celie does not read them, nor know about them and respond to them, does not deter Nettie from continuing to write
• Both Nettie and Celie develop the "story" of The Color Purple, even though they have no evidence that anyone will be able to read it