57 pages • 1-hour read
The Color Purple
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Pages 207-286Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 207-286 Summary
Celie and Shug settle in Shug’s house in Memphis as companions and lovers. She fills her days with making custom pants for her household and turns her crafting into a business, Folkspants Unlimited, at Shug’s suggestion. Celie returns to Georgia to attend the funeral of Sofia’s mother, and all of her circle are surprised by how stylish and confident she is. Celie visits with Albert and is shocked to see that, in some ways, he has reformed. After a deep depression when the women left for Tennessee, Albert started to recover with help from Harpo, who nurtured his father back to health. Sofia tells Celie that seeing Harpo care for his father allowed her to fall back in love with her husband. Harpo also convinced Albert to send all of Celie’s letters from Nettie to Tennessee.
Celie resumes reading these letters from Nettie. The situation continues to worsen for the Olinka once the rubber company relocates them to land with no water and gives them hot tin roofs since all the roofleaf is gone. Many villagers begin to flee to forest communities called mbeles. Intent on doing something, Samuel, Olivia, and the children travel to England for help, to no avail. The church is more concerned about Nettie and Samuel being unmarried. Listening to Samuel’s stories of meeting Corrine, his recognition of his vocation, and his fear that the mission to Africa was a mistake, Nettie is so moved that she gives in to her attraction to Samuel, and the two make love. They get married and return to the Olinka.
On their return, Adam discovers that Tashi, with whom he has fallen in love, has completed the tribal rites to adulthood, which involve ritual scarring on her face and genital cutting. Adam is disgusted by her choice and pushes the family to return home sooner rather than later. Their mission is now reduced to childminding, a much-needed service since all the Olinka are forced to work to pay their rents and taxes.
Celie writes to Nettie that Alphonso, their stepfather, is dead. Celie and Nettie inherit everything. During this time, Shug falls in love with Germaine, the nineteen-year-old flautist from her band. Shug insists it is a fling and promises to return in six months. Celie accepts these terms but is only able to bear the discussing it through writing to Shug.
Celie makes several visits back to Georgia and frequently runs into Albert. Albert has changed even more over the years. He admits he was a fool for having mistreated her and even proposed getting back together. Celie rejects him. When Albert questions whether she is even attracted to men, she says she is not. Men and their penises are no more than frogs to her, she says.
Celie writes to Nettie that she has received a telegram from the Department of Defense informing her that the ship carrying Nettie, Samuel, and the children sank near Gibraltar after tripping a German mine. Celie’s letters to Nettie all come back unopened. Celie feels bowed down with grief but keeps writing.
Nettie’s letters keep coming, however. She writes that the Tashi and her mother ran away to the mbeles and that now the Olinka are contending with malaria, which they traditionally treated with yams (no longer available with the loss of their planting grounds). Nettie also finds that she no longer feels at home with the faith she brought with her. She wants a more flexible faith that is fitting for Black people. She hopes she and Samuel can create a new religious community built by more likeminded people when she returns to the United States. She fears bringing Olivia and Adam, now young adults, to the United States, where they will encounter harsh and overt racism. Meanwhile, Tashi disappears, and Adam goes to look for her.
Celie writes about her struggles as she wonders about Nettie and her children. On top of that, Shug has not returned after the promised six-month period with Germaine. She is instead out west with Germaine and visiting her children, whom she has not seen since they were children and she left them with her parents.
Albert, ironically, provides sympathy to Celie when she tells him about missing Shug, her fears for her sister, and the truth about Alphonso. When Albert tries to call Shug and Sofia’s independence manly, Celie rejects this notion by noting that many women have this quality, while men like Harpo can be both masculine and nurturing. Albert also finally tells Celie about Shug leaving him over his treatment of Celie. Her decision was the inspiration for his evolution as a man, he explains. Albert embraces Celie after sharing this story, an act of compassion that surprises her. The two then make a habit of companionably constructing pants together after Celie teaches Albert to stitch. She passes on the African and Olinka origin stories Nettie writes down in her letters. Celie still receives letters from Nettie, despite the telegram about her death.
In her next letter, Nettie picks up the story of what happened to Adam. He went after Tashi and her mother, who went away to live in the mbeles. The mbeles are isolated by a great rift valley, and away from the encroachment of Europeans and business interests, they have a thriving, multitribal, egalitarian community that nurtures people wounded by the destruction of their villages. Their warriors (male and female) use the valley as a base of operation to wreak havoc on the European business interests.
Adam and Tashi return to the village, where after some negotiation, they agree to marry. To make Tashi feel less ashamed about her scars, Adam agrees to undergo scarification as well. Samuel marries the couple, and Adam assumes an African name (Adam Omatangu). Nettie closes the letter by telling Celie they will arrive in Georgia in a few weeks.
Back in the United States, Celie takes over the store she inherited after Alphonso’s death. Sofia clerks there for Black customers who prefer to deal with her over the white clerk Alphonso employed. Albert continues to grow. He is at peace and carves a purple frog for Celie in honor of their friendship.
Celie becomes content and accepts life as it is. Just as she learns this valuable life lesson, more change comes. Shug comes back, having sent Germaine off to college to fulfill his potential. Nettie and the children finally arrive. The reunion is joyous, and Celie addresses her prayers to God and all of nature in thanks for their return. The entire extended family celebrates their reunion with a Fourth of July picnic.
Pages 207-286 Analysis
The important themes of the novel all converge as Walker closes the novel. Walker uses the last portion of the novel to advance a vision of what life can be like when people are bold in countering traditional notions of gender and faith.
The results of boldness are most apparent in Celie. The Celie who emerges as a result of having loved, lost, and then regained Shug is a confident, strong Black woman who loves herself. She is financially independent and makes her living by doing the creative work of making pants for Folkspants. She has a deep appreciation for nature and beauty, so much so that she can bond with Albert, her former abuser and husband, over seashells and is willing to share a joint with her family and friends.
Celie also explicitly rejects many of the norms of Black womanhood that she learned as a girl. She comes out to Albert, and her honesty about who she is invites the same kind of honesty from Albert, who has gone through his own evolution. This Celie is also a woman whose conservative notions about women and gender roles have changed so much that she is willing to argue with Albert when he tries to claim that the Sofias and Shugs of the world are somehow outliers when it comes to Black female identity.
Meanwhile, Nettie goes through an evolution as well, and like Celie, she is forced to lay down her rigid notions of faith and what constitutes proper sexual decorum for a woman. The devastation of the Olinka and the culture finally convinces her that God is not to be found in the Christian church in which she served as a missionary. Her sexual relationship with Samuel before marriage and the English bishop’s concern with their marital status but not the terrible situation of the Olinka reveals that the church is hypocritical and ineffectual at confronting practical problems. She finds that the faith she brought with her to Olinka did not survive the journey.
Embracing self-determination and spirituality over institutionalized ways of living frees both women and men. We see Albert, the most conservative and oppressive of male figures in the book, evolve by recognizing his own fragility and need for love. He learns how to be a better man by listening to the women in his life, a reversal of his early belief that women are only good for sex and domination. The net positive of these hard-earned lessons is that Albert is loved and part of an extended family that he had lost in the dark years after Shug and Celie left. Walker’s development of Albert as a man who evolves from chauvinist abuser to loving family member shows that patriarchy burdens men as well and that abandoning rigid ideas about gender can improve their lives alongside that of the women in their lives. It also provides a model of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Having gone through important personal evolutions, each of the characters extrapolates from their experiences and thinks about the big picture. This last portion of the novel is full of utopian moments and dreams, and these utopias generally occur when people, especially women, attempt to imagine a life that is not governed by patriarchal, Eurocentric notions of who they can be.
Nettie has a vision of a new church, one not governed by the image of God as a-white man. Hers is a church that exhibits important aspects of Black theology centered on belief in a faith focused on the realities of life for Black people. Far outside the gaze of westerners (including Black ones like Nettie) are the mbeles, spaces where egalitarian, African values allow people to counter the physical and cultural encroachment of Europeans on their identities. This redoubt is all that stands between people like the Olinka and annihilation.
Celie’s store is another such space, one in which Sofia is on equal footing with the white clerk and is in fact preferred by Black patrons, who like being in a space where they are treated with respect. This space is one made possible by Celie’s capacity to create and market her creations. In this space, the Black members of Celie’s community feel welcomed and respected. Celie’s store makes her corner of Georgia a place where Black people see themselves as people who are worthy of respect.
Celie’s other space of possibility is her bedroom in the house she inherited. Consider that the room and the house are built on top of the site where Alphonso raped Celie and where her own parents came to grief. Celie transforms this space into one that is her very own. It is decorated in bright colors (purple and red) that celebrate Celie’s own brand of femininity and her creativity. It also includes a purple frog—created by Albert no less—that marks Celie’s queerness and Albert’s friendship. Although this space is less public than the store, it is a remarkable testament to shifts in gendered norms in this extended family.
Celie, Nettie, Shug, Albert, and all the characters connected to them have embraced a more expansive notion of God and gender, and the proliferation of spaces where they can continue to explore this new freedom is the result of a willingness to be guided by their own experiences.
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