All of the questions below should be answered with specific examples and direct quotations from the book. You may note those locations with sticky notes in your book. For ease in writing, you may want to remove sticky notes that don’t address those questions.
Your timed write question will most likely not be one of these questions, though the evidence you find will help you write your essay.
Answer questions one and two first, briefly. Revisit these questions again after you have considered the rest of the questions.
1. What is Alice Walker’s purpose in writing The Color Purple? What does she want readers to do when they’ve finished the novel? How do you know?
2. Is Alice Walker’s 1982 novel, The Color Purple, a novel about race? gender? poverty? religion? something else? How do you know?
3. Some of the characters in the novel could be characterized as submissive and some stand up for themselves. Over the course of the novel, identify moments of submission and moments when characters stand up for themselves? What are the consequences of these actions? What can we infer from these moments?
4. In the early chapters of Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, Celie meets a variety of characters who have an impact on the development of her identity. As the novel progresses, however, Celie begins to impact and shape other characters. Looking at these incidents, what conclusions can we draw about Alice Walker’s beliefs about the way people develop their sense of self?
5. How many families are there in the novel? How are they formed and how are they split? What makes families strong? Weak? Genuine? Artificial? What can we learn about families in the African American community from this novel? What can we learn about families in white society from this novel?
No comments:
Post a Comment