Outside Reading Blog Numbero Uno (this only took me forever)

I am currently reading the book The Color Purple written by Alice Walker. This book, so far, has been about the main character named Celie. At the beginning of this book Celie is 14 years old. Celie is seems to be a nice girl, but she isn't very smart. Her speech isn't very good and she can't write very intelligently. She's motivated by her sister Nettie. Nettie is very smart and reads all of the time. She tries to help Celie become more educated and is trying to help her learn how to teach herself how to do things. This is shown when Celie explains, "She be sitting there with me shelling peas or helping the children with they spelling. Helping me with spelling and everything else she think I need to know. No matter what happen, Nettie steady try to teach me what go on in the world. And she a good teacher too," (16). Celie loves Nettie very much and is trying to be a better person for her little sister.
Struggles that Celie experiences early on in this book are that she is raped by her mother's boyfriend and becomes pregnant with his child twice. She struggles with coming to terms with being violated in such a way, and also with having to give away her children. Even though she does not want children she finds it difficult to give them up. Celie also struggles with marriage, her own as well as her sister's. She doesn't feel ready to get married and she doesn't want her sister to marry someone that isn't smart enough for her. She knows that her sister is very intelligent and she feels like she should be married to someone equally as smart. Once Celie does get married she struggles with not being in love with her husband and also not loving his children. She shows this to the reading when she says, "Everybody say how good I is to Mr. children. I be good to them. But I don't feel nothing for them. Patting Harpo back not even like patting a dog. It more like patting another piece of wood. Not a living tree, but a table, a chifferobe. Anyhow, they don't love me neither, no matter how good I is," (29). She clearly feels unloved and unwanted by his family. All of these things help Celie realize that in order to be happy in life she needs to find true love and compassion from others.
I feel that this book is similar to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in the way that the narrator is struggling so much with themselves as well as with their environment and the people in it.