Culture in the Color Purple “Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.” That is a quote by Jawaharlal Nehru, former Prime Minister of India. I interpreted this as culture expands your knowledge as well as you spiritual life. This statement is false. In the novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple, the Characterization of the protagonist, Celie, and the setting of the novel disprove this. Mohja Kahf also shows evidence against this in her poem, My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears, with the plot of the poem. The main protagonist in Walker’s, The Color Purple, is Celie, a young African American woman fighting through the struggles of living in the early 1900s as a black female. The novel is written in an epistolary style with Celie writing letters to her distant sister Nettie, and god in the beginning. Eventually Celie stops writing to god and solely writes letters to Nettie. “‘…the god I been praying and writing to is a man. And act like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgetful, and lowdown.’”(Walker 73). At this point Celie has finally given up belief in god, which in a way removes the blindfold from her eyes. When Celie was relying on god nothing good was coming from it. So once Celie became less spiritual and cultural and acted on things that displeased her by herself, she got results. The whole time these cultural beliefs were just blinding her. It’s the early 1900s in Georgia, in the Deep South, a region known for being very close-minded at the time. Discrimination, injustice, and sexism are just three of the words that can be used to describe some of the actions that take place in this region. The culture down there is a very simple one: Agree with us, act like us, and live like us or get out. The setting of this book shows that culture does not necessarily lead to intelligence, it sometimes leads to ignorance. ‘“They’re like the white people at home who don’t want colored people to learn.’”(Walker 62). Olivia is making a comparison to the southerners with the Olinka tribe. Mohja Kahf, author of My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears, discusses religion in her poem. Her grandmother, a muslim, and the other people in the store, presumably Christians (based on the fact that the mid-west is highly populated with Christians), have conflicting beliefs:
"You can't do that," one of the women protests, turning to me, "Tell her she can't do that."
"We wash our feet five times a day," my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic.
"My feet are cleaner than their sink.
Worried about their sink, are they? I should worry about my feet!"
My grandmother nudges me, "Go on, tell them."
These cultural beliefs only bring conflict. Neither side is more intelligent for believing in their own god. Once again there is ignorance not intelligence. If everyone did not have such strong beliefs there would be less conflict in the world. So in conclusion, “Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.” The quote by Jawaharlal Nehru is false. Cultural beliefs do not lead to intelligence. It leads to ignorance and unnecessary conflict as shown by the characterization of Celie, and the setting of The Color Purple, and the plot of Kahf’s, My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears.