“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker (post 6): Namelessness explained by the two places in life where it occurs; plus how characters are born and named.

Many reviews of this book don’t even mention the lack surnames for Celie’s husband, Mr. ______, and the Reverend Mr. ______.

One literary critic has argued that the lack of a surname was meant to demean Celie’s wife-beating husband. But that would explain neither the lack of a surname for the Reverend Mr. ______ (always a good man) nor the continuing lack of a surname for Celie’s husband even after he reforms at the end of the novel. Not to mention that Celie lacks a surname, too.

Two Places Namelessness Occurs

The only circumstance in which I have ever met a nameless “person” is when, as a psychiatrist, I have met people who have multiple personality and spoken with their alternate personalities: It is very common to find that some of the alternate personalities are nameless.

Thus, there are only two places in life where you find nameless “persons”: in multiple personality and novels. This common feature is one reason I think of characters in novels as being alternate personalities of novelists.

Characters

Characters are psychologically born, not manufactured. Novelists do not stitch together their characters like Frankenstein’s monster. Mark Twain said that neither he nor any other novelist has ever created a character.

In writers’ subjective experiences, characters come not from them, but to them. In her Afterword, Alice Walker implied that she experienced her characters as being like spirits who visit and inhabit a medium.

Characters’ Names

Some characters, when they come to writers, already have a name. Other characters come without names. In the latter case, novelists may assign names. But some characters refuse names. And some novelists feel that if a character comes without a name, then that is how it was meant to be.