· “Harpo sit on the steps acting like he don’t care. He making a net for seining fish. He look out toward the creek every once in a while and whistle a little tune. But it nothing compared to the way he usually whistle. His little whistle sound like it lost way down in a jar, and the jar in the bottom of the creek,” (Walker 67).
· “I don’t remember that, he say. You come by the house with my mama friend, Mr. Jimmy, I say,” (Walker 96).
· “They say everybody before Adam was black. Then one day some woman they just right away kill, come out with this colorless baby. They thought at first it was something she ate. But then another one had one and also the women start to have twins. So the people start to put the white babies and the twins to death,” (Walker 273).
In The Color Purple, Alice Walker exposes her voice and style through Celie’s informal letters to God and Nettie. Syntax by definition is the way words are put together to form phrases and sentences. The author’s form of syntax is very rare in fictional writing due to her omission of quotes when relaying dialogue. Her style represents a more realistic situation, as if Celie were actually writing letters to her sister and to God. Much like the informal diction used in the story, the sentences Walker forms using colloquial words are frequently short and fragmented, which portrays declarative statements said typically by the women in the tale. These quick, declarative statements help reveal the purpose of this novel: to give southern African American women a voice in their homes and societies.
I think you did a great way of explaining syntax since i had a really hard time explaining it. Walker did do a great job of creating realistic situation with the use of the letters. I do agree on the fact that Walker used those declarative sentence to shine a new light of African American women of the time.
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