250 words, 3 hrs

Literary Response

The Color Purple EXAM

5 POINTS EACH

Directions: Respond in writing to the following questions, based on quotations from the text. As this response serves as a test of your comprehension, please be thorough and detailed in your response.

1. Analyze the narrative and rhetorical strategies used in the text, as evidenced by the following quotation:

Dear God,

He act like he can’t stand me no more. Say I’m evil an always up to no good. He took my other little baby, a boy this time. But I don’t think he kilt it. I think he sold it to a man an his wife over Monticello. I got breasts full of milk running down myself. He say Why don’t you look decent? Put on something. But what I’m sposed to put on? I don’t have nothing.

I keep hoping he fine somebody to marry. I see him looking at my little sister. She scared. But I say I’ll take care of you. With God help. (4)

2. Analyze how characterization is revealed and developed in the following quotation:

I remember one time you said your made you feel so ashamed you

couldn’t even talk about it to God, you had to write it, bad as you thought your

writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read

letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for

me. Anyway, when I don’t write to you I feel as bad as I do when I don’t pray,

locked up in myself and choking on my own heart. I am so lonely, Celie. (136)

3. Analyze how the following quotation reflects a primary theme or motif in the text:

And then she look up.

Under all that powder her face black as Harpo. She got a long pointed nose and big fleshy mouth. Lips look like black plum. Eyes big, glossy. Feverish. And mean. Like, sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it.

She look me over from head to foot. Then she cackle. Sound like a death rattle. You sure is ugly, she say, like she ain’t believed it. (48)