Blog 1

Blog 1: Dear God ----- Celie starts out her letters at the beginning of the book with the words, Dear God. Celie tells all of her thoughts and prayers to God, without seeming to want or expect a response back. The first line of the book says, "You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy" (1). The reader obviously has no idea what this means, but it gives somewhat of an explanation for why Celie is writing to God. It is hard to tell if Celie even believes in God, she doesn't seem to be personally talking to him through her letters, more just telling her story. Further into the book the start of her letters changes to her sister Nettie. As Celie's life changes and more people come in and out, it seems like she draws even farther away from the concept of God while her sister is actually doing "God's work" in Africa. The very last entry in the book clears up a lot of my confusion about the letters. Instead of writing to God, Celie explains who she thinks God is. She starts her last letter with these words: "Dear God. Dear stars, dear tress, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God" (291). Celie considers God to be in everything in the world. She capitalizes the word Everything as she does the word God. Celie has been writing letters to anyone or anything that will listen to her. She needed to get the story of her life into words on paper because there was no better way to tell them and no better person to tell them to.