BELOVED & THE COLOR PURPLE

By: Airika Bingle

BELOVED BACKGROUND

Author: Toni Morrison

Set in a post Civil War time period

Inspired by a true story• Margaret Garner• A slave killed her own daughter to prevent her from

living a captured life

TONI MORRISON

African-American

She came from a working class family

Had many of sibling

Family passed down folktales• Inspired many of her works

Her novel concentrate on Black women• She does not consider herself to be a feminist• Critics says she fits in “postmodern feminism”

THE COLOR PURPLE BACKGROUND

Author: Alice Walker

Written in 1982

Novel takes place in the 1930

Concentrates on the life of African-American Women

ALICE WALKER

Came from a big African-American family with low income

Her family had a tradition of orally passing down stories

Walker began writing to share her secrets

Took part in the Civil Rights Movement

Often wrote about sexism and racism

Violence/Slavery• Sethe Tries to Escape a

life of slavery• Killed her own child to

protect her• She in a sense becomes a

slave to Beloved• Tries making up for lost

time• She wants to please her• She refuses to run away

from the haunting

Violence/Slavery• Celie was abused her

whole life• Became a Slave to Mr. ___

• She does whatever he asks

• Forced into sex• She cooks, cleans, and

takes care of his misbehaved children

• She is never truly happy until the ending

THEME COMPARISON

Beloved The Color Purple

CONCLUSION

Based on the Background knowledge, the context of the stories, and the author’s lives:

• They have similar views• Their beliefs were similar• They wrote about similar subject matter• The Stories, even though they were different, had

similar themes

HACKING

I feel as though the Author’s hacked in order to prove a point of the struggles these women faced during their time period, and their race

I hacked these novels to gain knowledge and find the convergence of these two seemingly different perspective

CLASS READINGS/ WEEK 6 & 7

• War was a topic• These two novels can relate to war

• Literally• They are set in a time period after the civil war was

fought• There are still signs of obvious and radical racism

• Figuratively• Celie: is in a war with herself

• She is never truly happy until she makes changes within herself

• Sethe• Fighting with the choices she made (killing her

own child)