Comparative Analysis of The Color Purple and Beloved

1. Comparative Analysis of The Color Purple and Beloved By Sara Kelly

2. Short summary of the color purple • The Color Purple is focused on a black woman named Celie and her life and the struggles she goes through such as rape, being married to a man that she does not love, a lesbian romance, and raising a family that is not her own.

3. Short Summary of Beloved • Beloved is the story of a young black family whose mother kills her own child and is convinced that she comes back reincarnated in a young woman named Beloved. Many superstitious things happen to the family and they are all convinced that it is because of the ghost of the baby that Sethe killed.

4. The shared theme • The shared theme between these stories are the story line of black women who try to live after being either in or a generation after slavery and the struggles and superstitions they endure

5. Context • You can tell that the two pieces are meant to be from the same time period, especially because of the way they talk. For instance in The Color Purple, Celie writes in a dialect that an uneducated person in that time would write. You can tell from conversation in Beloved that they way they talk is the same way Celie writes. Unfortunately this was not at all uncommon in the 1860’s, which is the time period these pieces are set in.

6. HACKING INTO LITERATURE • These works of literature show you what it is like for a black woman in the 1860’s. You can see how they were treated and their superstitions • These pieces of work really relate to some of the readings in Unit 3. For example, “The Woman Hanging From the 13th Floor Window” addresses the roles expected of certain women and their lives. All these pieces of work are deep into showing the life of a woman at a certain time and the struggles they endure