Examples Of Sacrifice In The Color Purple

In the book The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Celie sacrifices her childhood, her education, and her freedom for her sister Nettie. Celie’s sacrifices are not only representative of her value of Nettie, but also of the lack of value she has for herself. Throughout the book, Celie sacrifices a great deal of what she has and gets extremely little in return. She never fights for herself and does whatever people make her. She is pulled out of school, beaten, raped, and forced into marriage at a very young age. All of these sacrifices kept Nettie safe and educated, but hurt Celie, who only thought of her sister and not of herself. The first thing that Celie sacrifices is her childhood. Her father beats and rapes her for reasons such as him thinking that she “winked at a boy in church” (Walker, page 5). This happens throughout her childhood, and she never fights back or complains to anyone. Celie ends up pregnant twice from the rapes and both of her babies are taken from her. At this point she is only about fourteen years old. Celie does not fight to get her babies back, she just accepts the fact that her father has either killed or sold them. This is an example of how Celie never fights back or tries to get what she both needs and deserves. When Celie is a little older, she is forced into marriage with Mr.____ so that Nettie can “git some more schooling” (Walker, page 7). Her father tells Mr.____ that he should choose to marry Celie instead of Nettie for this reason and because “She the oldest …show more content…
The fact that all of her sacrifices kept Nettie safe proves that she values Nettie very highly. Celie values Nettie more than herself, and focuses all of her energy on Nettie and other people. It is not until the end of the book that Celie learns that she needs to focus on her own needs, too, and not sacrifice so much that she has