The Color Purple and of Mice and Men Comparative Essay

Comparative Text Essay:
The Color Purple and Of Mice and Men
Friendship impacts the characters ability to overcome oppression

The Color Purple is a 1985 film directed by Steven Spielberg that follows the story of an African American girl Celie through the span of twenty eight years. The film deals with strong themes such as friendship, racism, violence and how her life is impacted by some of those key ideas. Of Mice and Men is a 1937 book written by John Steinbeck and it shadows two characters George and Lennie who are starting yet another job in California in hopes that they will eventually achieve their dream. Like the Color Purple it deals with similar themes, including how oppression affects the characters which is, in both a significant underlying idea throughout. In both the film and novel, it can be seen that friendship gives the characters strength to overcome their oppression, this doesn’t happen immediately but something that progresses through the course of both texts.

In the Color Purple and Of Mice and Men friendship gives the characters confidence which develops their sense of self-worth. Gradually this friendship will impact the characters ability to overcome oppression. In the Color Purple, Celie is a woman who ever since she was a young girl,   had been told that she was “ugly” and that her smile was the “ugliest on all of cretin” this had a tremendous effect on her, especially concerning how she views and feels about herself. Similarly, in Of Mice and Men Lennie has, like Celie, a low sense of self-worth. On the contrary it isn’t because of his appearance but as he is always forgetting and doing bad things, Lennie feels like he is very unimportant person. This can been seen when he knew he had done something wrong and he asks George: “you want I would go away and leave you alone?” It shows that every time he had made a mistake, Lennie feels like he should go away, which the underlying reason why he says things like that is because of the...