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Going beyond the seen

Barnali Talukder experiences the reality of the unseen
THIS time, before I began wandering around my newly bought novel, I thought of having a glimpse at the preface. It is something very different for my reading history as I always finish the novel first and then gather information on what the novel actually deals with. And this exception I particularly did out of sheer curiosity about the title of the novel, The Color Purple, which, I believe, can all at once sparkle a panorama of a blissful realm of colors in the reader's mind. In reading the preface I found the writer, Alice Walker, singling out purple from other colors as it appeals to her as a surprising color and ironically is present everywhere in nature. And this color, she presumably wants to say, has much aptitude for reinforcing the idea of oneness in nature. Alice Walker thinks everything in nature is strung together to concoct a complete harmony from where anything can be exempt for sometime, but it is sure to re-mingle sooner or later with the greater resonance of the world. And this idea of hers gets a much unpredictable depiction in the novel as she chooses a blistering real-life situation to release her thoughts.
Placing circumstances in a periphery of South America, Walker creates Celie for the main character of the novel. She is an illiterate, black and incredibly tolerable girl who is raped several times by her so-called father and gives birth to two children. However, her children are snatched away from her. And later she is married to another person who has four children left by his previous marriage. Amid all these uglinesses of life the only comfort to Celie is her sister Nettie. Nettie is also helpless like her sister, but she is
determined not to yield to any situation-bound-dichotomy of life. And that's where these two sisters get separated in thought as well as in practice, and Nettie leaves in search of something unexplored and uncompromising. In the meantime, Celie meets electrifying Shug Avery, the ladylove of her husband who is also a singer by profession. This ravishing, unbending and self-sustained lady opens a new window to Celie to encounter life with new understanding. Nettie, on the other hand, experiences a totally different discourse of African life, being part of a missionary campaign over there. Finally both of them embrace life in their own ways and are able to interpret the meaning of life on their own terms which inevitably reminds me of those famous lines from James Joyce's 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' - "Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience..."
Alice Walker, I think, shows her excellence in style, as a result of which the stories of Celie and other essential people in the novel appear like letters written in most places to God, some other places to Celie by Nettie and in a few other places to Nettie by Celie. And many readers can clearly identify the entire novel as a sort of autobiography. There are some other deliberate technical attributes in the novel. Most transparent among these is the language of Celie, which profoundly resembles the speech of an illiterate and homely girl. On the other hand, the language of Nettie is purified, coherent, straightforward and distinguishably sharpened. Another facet of such technical brilliance is seen when the names of few characters are sealed in for many chapters. Even Celie herself remains anonymous, initially. This, I think, Walker designs to show a journey from a state of non-existence to existence. Celie, on her way to unknotting the folds of her life, unfolds the true face of her surrounding people and finally comes to confront their every possible face vigorously. And in the final chapter, digressing from the address to God, Celie includes all stars, trees, sky, and people and of course God in her address, and that's where Celie can synchronize with the harmony of the universe and becomes a transcenden-talist. So it can easily be assumed that Walker wonderfully combines both technique and substance to capture the essence of Celie's life.
Alice Walker, most boisterously
in the preface, stresses the presence of mystery everywhere which, she thinks, can find a gateway of expression only through nature. In this respect, I could remember a story by William Faulkner, titled 'A Rose for Emily', where the protagonist Emily leads a very mysterious life, provoking tremendous curiosity in her neighbour's mind, but all her mystery is dissolved at a blink of an eye after her death. Emily's mystery is something which enthralls the reader and ultimately limits the meaning of life.
BARNALI TALUKDER STUDIES ENGLISH LITERATURE AT DHAKA UNIVERSITY. SHE CAN BE REACHED AT BORNO.TALUKDER@GMAIL.COM