The Color Purple: Quotationless.

     The Color Purple by Alice Walker is the exploration of the protagonist, Celie's discovering of power, sexuality, and self in general. One thing that I have found intriguing within this epistolary, is that Walker chose not to use quotation marks with character interactions, and how this choice characterizes Celie. In fact, sometimes this makes it difficult to distinguish when she is speaking to "God", or whoever she writes to in her letters, and when she is showing what she had said/is saying to other characters. For example, on page two the passage:
     "I say God took it.
     He took it. He took it while I was sleeping. Kilt it out there in the woods. Kill this one too, if he can".
This makes it hard to tell whether or not she stops vocally speaking after "God took it". I first began analyzing this during our first Socratic Seminar. Regarding the voice and structure of the novel, other books we have read this year have also chosen not to use quotation marks for dialogue, such as Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo. Initially, I found this to mean that Celie is only telling her story. The lack of quotation marks is hinders others the ability to tell Celie's story. This is certainly an aspect that displays metaphorical author intent, but one thing I failed to realize until today is that, when this is viewed considering the persona, it demonstrates Celie's ability to write in general. Although certainly not an unintelligent character, Celie was not allowed the education that would give her the knowledge of knowing when to utilize quotation marks to differentiate dialogue and prose. And quotation marks isn't the only thing that demonstrates this, the diction in the novel (the way Celie spells words), show this, as well. Clearly, she was taught to spell words the way they sound (the foundation for learning how to write). Back to the passage on page 2, she spells "kilt" instead of "killed", although she means the latter (considering the word "kilt" really means a Scottish man-skirt). Also, on page 47, she spells correctly, but uses technical "improper" grammar when writing "She just sick". This proves to show that Celie is not only characterized through her story, but her medium, and how she tells her story.