One of the main characters, Celie, in The Color Purple experiences many personal misfortunes which eventually lead to the discovery of her true identity. The first instance of a personal misfortune takes place, when Celie is forced by her father to marry a stranger. The person she marries is actually in love with Celie’s sister, Nettie, but their father decides Nettie has too much potential to succeed in the world to marry so young; therefore Celie is the next option. This event affects her life because the marriage was a very unhappy one for Celie. Generally people get married because they share a bond or special emotions for one another, but neither Mr.___ nor Celie desire feelings for the other. The quotation “Mr.___ marry me to take care of his children. I marry him cause my daddy made me. I don’t

It was not only the disappointment my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of expectations. I didn’t get straight As. I didn’t become class president. I didn’t get into Stanford. I dropped out of college. For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me. (Tan 153)

He beat me like he beat the children. Cept he don’t never beat them. ...It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie you a tree. That’s how come I know trees fear men. (Walker 23)

Jing-Mei’s mother affected her self-worth, but Jing-Mei learned from this. She knew that the only person she could be was herself, and she was happy with that, even if her mother would be disappointed because she has no extraordinary talents. Personal acceptance is a main step towards discovering one’s true identity because by accepting who she is, she will understand who she is. A final example of a relationship affecting the main character is in the story, “The Joy Luck Club”. This story also deals with a relationship between a mother and a daughter, but this relationship was awkward, because the mother and daughter felt alienated by each other. According to Patricia Hamilton, “Language takes on a metonymic relation to culture in Tan’s portrayal of the gap between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club. Jing-Mei, recalling that she talked to her mother, Suyuan, in English and that her mother answered back in Chinese, concludes that they ‘never really understood one another’: ‘We translated each other’s meaning and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more’.” (Hamilton) This excerpt of literary criticism is significant because it describes the awkward relationship both the mother and daughter experienced daily, by not understanding what each was meaning. This eventually would lead Jing-Mei to finding her true identity because Jing-Mei would not only learn from this experience how to listen to others, but also how to listen to herself. Understanding and participating in relationships can be extremely challenging as many people throughout the two novels realized, but creating and sustaining relations with people is not the only way for a person to discover their identity. Most characters had to educate themselves, to understand what their personal identity was; the only way this could be done was to be happy and to listen to their heart.

In conclusion, although at times these novels seemed a bit unusual because of the language and content, they both teach the importance of positive and negative situations and relationships. Therefore The Color Purple and The Joy Luck Club portray a similar theme, because female main characters experience personal misfortunes and male/female relationships which ultimately lead to the discovery of their true identity.

Throughout the novel, The Joy Luck Club, characters create and find themselves in relationships with relatives, spouses, and siblings. Often these relationships are frustrating, but much like in The Color Purple, characters eventually learn an important and worthy lesson from the interactions with such people. The first example of this type of a relationship affecting the main character’s life is evident in the story, “Half and Half”. This is because the relationship between daughter, Rose and her husband, Ted, is a complicated one which also shows hints of sexism. An example of this sexism is when Ted always insists on making the decisions in the house. A quotation describing the sexist relationship is:

Relationships commonly develop between people, whether they are a friendship between two girlfriends, a relationship based on dislike between two enemies, or a marriage. Often these relationships affect the participants’ futures, similarly to the way rela

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