Adapting Literature

Classroom Activity 2

Objective: Students will be able to process and articulate connections drawn from paired texts.

The teacher will reiterate the three themes examined in the lives of Celie and Fantasia. They will look at the following synopses of clips from The Color Purple and discuss in cooperative groups which category the scene falls under and why.

1. Young Celie's first introduction to domestic violence is when little Harpo, in response to the declaration that "this here your new mammy," says, "she ain't none of my mammy," hurling a rock at and busting her head, causing it to bleed.
2. In response to Mister's directive to shut his screaming daughter up, as Celie tries to tame her mangled unkempt hair, Celie tells him, "I can't it hurt's her." He gets up and slaps her across the face, causing her nose to bleed, and replies "don't talk back to me, you do what I tell you." She then covers the daughter's mouth to muffle her screams.
3. As Celie goes to shave Mister in his anticipation of Shug coming, with the drunken comments, two days! My Shug gon' be here, and everything gone be the way it should be. Come on girl cuz' I'm waitin' for you! Right when Celie brings the sharp razor to his neck, he forcefully grabs her hand and threatens, with a sharp eye and tongue, "you cut me, and I'll kill you." This places the fear of God in Celie, shaking with the razor in hand, with Mister glaring upside down at her with a threatening eye.
4. The sound of the approaching mailman takes Celie—in expectation of a letter from Nettie—off course and causes her to cut Mister while shaving him. He has already forewarned her by saying, "Cut me, and I'll kill you." As Mister gets ready to back-hand her, he recognizes the mailman and his expectation of a letter from Shug makes him jovial so that he lowers his hand, running to the mailbox yelling with glee, "Shug, Shug, I'm comin'!" Celie is so grateful for not being hit, warm with anticipation of a letter from Nettie, that she goes into the house and inhales and exhales long and hard.
5. When Celie asks if there is any mail from Nettie, Mister forbids her to touch the mailbox, letting her know that he "fixed" the mailbox so he can tell if it has been tampered with. He then demands his supper when he gets back. Her response is a sad, morose, tear-filled "yes-sa."
6. In another scene we will see our first depiction of Harpo as a scared, brainless, clumsy kid with no backbone, when Mister bursts through the door to inquire whether or not his horse has been saddled yet. Harpo has brought the horse to the porch, but the noise from mister has caused the horse to back away. Harpo nervously and energetically responds with "Yes sir, I'm gittin' to it, I'm gittin' to it, and proceeds to place the saddle on the horses back, not aware that the horse is no longer there. The saddle falls to the ground, and the camera emphasizes the big-eyed intimidated Harpo's blunder.
7. A bit later in the film, when Harpo is irritated that Sophia will not mind, in the midst of fixing the roof, he falls through, a scene that further emasculates him in his efforts to be "the man of the house." Sophia returns to her house-turned-juke-joint after having left Harpo. She makes her grand entrance on the arm of another man, and Harpo again falls, not through the roof, but from the ceiling on the inside of the juke joint, like a monkey falling from a tree, in his futile efforts to hide from and spy on Sophia at the same time.

Student assessment would come in the form of an essay test where they would get these and other scenarios from the movie, identify which of the three themes are reflected and explain why.