Literary Devices

I am on page 282 of The Color Purple by Alice Walker. There are a lot of allusions to the Bible in this book, particularly the story of Adam and Eve. Celie and Mr. _____ (who has changed immensely) sit and sew and have conversations while they are sewing. One of the major conversations they have had is about whether Adam and Eve were the first people on Earth, or if they were only the first white people. According to what Celie understood from Nettie’s letters, Adam was “The first man that was white. Not the first man. They say nobody so crazy they think they can say who was the first man. But everybody notice the first white man cause he white,” (278). This allusion is brought up to further expand on a major theme of racism. The Olinka believe that the story of Adam and Eve is the underlying cause for all the racism in the world. They feel that because they threw Adam and Eve out of the garden for being white, all the white people in the world want revenge taken on the black people, which is why the whites treat them so badly.