The Color Purple And Stephen Crane s Maggie, A Girl Of...

Kara Zittergruen Ms. Murtha English III 16 November 2016 Rough draft Albert Schweitzer once said, One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome diversity (Brainy Quote). While everyone has barriers and hurdles in their lives, only some people have the courage to get over them. It is often hard for people to move on after abuse, loss, or other tragedies. People can choose to descend into self-loathing and destructive behavior, or they can make an effort to overcome their battle, and make something of themselves. Regardless of the contrasting endings in Alice Walker s The Color Purple and Stephen Crane s Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, both female protagonists are impacted immensely by the abuse and neglect they endured early on in their lives. In The Color Purple, Celie, a young black woman is abused by her father. Ever since she was a little girl he beat her. He beat me today cause he say I winked at a boy in church. I may have got somethin in my eye but I didn’t wink. I don’t ev en look at mens. That’s the truth. I look at women, tho, cause I’m not scared of them (Walker 5). Despite this persistent abuse throughout her early life, she is able to let go and rise above it. She finds what she wants and she is inspired to move on. In Maggie a Girl of the Streets, Maggie also deals with family struggles. While her mother, Mary, is an abusive alcoholic and her brother, Jimmie, is a brute, Maggie manages to grow up to be aShow MoreRelatedBrief Survey of American Literature3339 Words   |  14 Pages Billy Budd Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) â€Å"art for art’s sake† Horror story Science fiction Detective story Psychologically thrilling tale Poems Literary criticism The Realism and Naturalism 1865—1914 REALISM The Local Color Movement (1865-1880) Local Color Mark Twain (1835-1910) Innocents Abroad (1869) The Gilded Age (1873) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) The Prince and the Pauper (1882) Life on the Mississippi (1883) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) A Connecticut Yankee