The Color Purple 1113Pilgrim is a victim of two forms of violence: that
which is threatened physically and that which is
delivered through psychological damage. While the
threats of his fellow soldiers keep him in a constant
state of fear for his life, others also contribute to
Pilgrim’s insecure sense of self. When the Germans
capture him, they degrade him by making him wear
a woman’s coat. As prisoners of war, Pilgrim and his
fellow Americans receive unequal treatment from
the Germans and their fellow captives, the English.
Judging the starved American soldiers undisci-
plined, the English leave them to an inferior shelter,
build their own, and shun the newly arrived prison-
ers. This additional rejection by one’s proclaimed
allies manifests a form of social violence in which
one group demeans another as inferior.
The pervasive nature of these many forms
of violence contributes to Pilgrim’s status as a
time traveler who has become “unstuck in time.”
Through wartime memories and uncontrollable
visitations to various moments of his life, Pilgrim
remains constantly subject to violent disruptions of
the normal progression of life. His capture by the
alien Tralfamadorians matches his experiences as a
soldier and a prisoner of war, which prevented him
from living freely. Vonnegut’s use of time travel thus
disrupts the expected sequence of a plot that moves
the protagonist forward from one scene to the next.
In this way, the subject matter of violence—the
unsettling of characters’ lives—also shapes the
structure of the novel, which exhibits a similarly
unsettled plot line.
The ultimate act of violence at the novel’s heart
is the bombing of Dresden during World War II.
The real-world bombing of an entire civilian cen-
ter illustrates the many aspects of violence in one
historic example. The bombing was intended to
weaken the enemy, but the actual accomplishment
that Vonnegut focuses on is the senseless deaths of
thousands of innocent bystanders. Like Pilgrim’s
own situation, in which he finds himself unable
to leave the conflict behind him, the bombing
of Dresden brought the war into an area usually
protected from direct attacks by the conventions
of war.
The theme of violence is thus present in charac-
ters’ lives, the book’s subject matter of war and peace,
and the very structure of the plot. Whether physical
or psychological, threatened or delivered, violence
has profound and long-lasting effects on those
whom it touches. The victims of violence include
not just those who died in the war but everyone who
struggles with violence in daily life and in memo-
ries of tragic events. Vonnegut’s narrator forces the
reader to make sense out of the violent situation
by reading through an unconventional story whose
disorder reflects the violence at its heart.
Tim BryantwaLkEr, aLiCE The Color Purple
(1982)
Set between world wars in the Deep South, Alice
Walker’s The Color Purple follows the struggles of
the downtrodden black protagonist, Celie. Believing
herself to be ugly, poor, uneducated, and incapable of
finding love, she finds comfort in God. Indeed, the
novel is constructed as a series of letters from Celie
to God in which she talks about being raped by the
man she believes is her father, being separated from
her two children, her fears for her sister Nettie, an
abusive marriage with Mr. ____ (Albert, hereafter
called “Mr.”), and the various black men and women
who influence her life.
In the midst of such suffering, however, Celie
finds love in the shape of Shug Avery. This glamor-
ous and sexualized singer is nursed back to health by
Celie, at which point the two women form a bond
that goes beyond a conventional female friendship.
For the first time in her life, Celie is offered support,
affection, and sexual intimacy unlike anything she
has experienced with a man.
As the novel draws to a close, Celie discovers
that her husband tried to seduce Nettie, forced
her to leave, and then concealed all of her letters
from Africa. Celie is consumed by hatred and rage.
Finding strength in her relationship with Shug,
she eventually leaves home with her female lover
to begin a new life away from “Mr.” Finally having
the love that she has craved for so long, Celie’s hap-
piness is complete when her sister Nettie returns
home from Africa and reunites her with her two
children.
Jessica Webb