Celie and her Father

At the young age of fourteen, Celie started to write letters to God and in it she talked about her thoughts, feelings, and what exactly was happening in her life. In her first letter, Celie talks about her father, Alphonso, who rapers her and constantly beats her. She wrote that he had impregnated her once and she gave birth to a girl, but her father had stolen the child and killed her in the woods. When her father had raped her again, Celie had a second child, a boy, whom her father had stolen again but rather than her father killing the child, it was sold. Celie tries to keep the fact that her father beats and rapes her hidden from her mother and sister,but they eventually found out. When Celie's mother became ill and died, her father brought home a new wife but he continued to abuse Celie. A man known as Mr. _____ wanted to marry Nettie, Celie's sister, but Alphonso refused to let Nettie marry. He then offered Mr. _____ Celie as a bride to which he eventually accepts the offer. Celie is finally able to get away from her abusive father, but she still worry's that Nettie is the next one to be raped and beaten by Alphonso.

The symbol that would best represents the relationship between Celie and her father would be a sword or a knife because Celie is constantly abused by her father. Being stabbed or cut by a sword or a knife represents how the scar tissue is left once the wound heals. The relationship between these two throughout the book is basically all abusing. Physically and emotionally you could get scarred by being beaten, just like how a cut or stab from either a sword or knife would leave you with a scar in the end. “He beat me today cause he say I winked at a boy in church. I may have got something in my eye but I didn’t wink. I don’t even look at mens.”