How Does Alice Walker Present Albert In The Color Purple

Miranda Shirk

AP Literature and Composition

Mrs. Sites

24 March 2017

Albert or Mister? Throughout history we have always learned how awfully white people treated black people but we never really learned how black men treated women during this time. Alice Walker uses The Color Purple to show how many African American women were treated during this time period. She does this through the character of Albert and how he treats his wife Celie. Although Albert does these awful things to his wife she still finds ways to make you sympathize and humanize his character. In The Color Purple, Albert is a very violent, ill tempered, and abusive man that later learns to love and care about people. In the novel, Walker uses Albert to help depict how African

Also unlike his relationship with Celie, he cares about what Shug wants and tries to give her everything she wants, causing Shug to have complete control of her and Alberts relationship. Although to better humanize him, Walker also explains why Albert treats Celie the way he does by showing the reader who his father is and kind of explaining how he was raised. Albert was raised in a patriarchal system where the eldest man has all the power. Albert treats Celie the way he does because it was all he had ever known and his father continues to try and get him to live that way until Albert changes and does not listen anymore. Throughout the book, Albert gets viewed as a horrible and weak man because of the way he acts and because he cannot stand up to his father and change his

The name Mister was used in the book to make Albert seem like he was completely in control and to make it seem like he demanded respect, which in most cases his character did. The name Mister makes Albert seem like he is a strong untouchable character but he is a weak character that abuses Celie to get what he wants until all that changes and she leaves him and goes with Shug. Albert is then forced to take care of his own kids and his farm and he learns to care about them and love them and he realizes how wrong he treated Celie and tries to make it better by bringing her sister back to her. When Albert does this, it shows that the name Mister is no longer needed because he no longer feels the need to be in complete control and cares about people in the end of the