Universität Augsburg
Lehrstuhl für Amerikanistik
Hauptseminar: “Recent American Fiction“
Dozent: Prof. Dr. Zapf
Referentinnen: Frauke Schneider, Nina Rose,
Johanna Sauer
24.05.2005
Alice Walker: “Strong Horse Tea”
1. Biography of Alice Walker:
Alice Malsenior Walker was born on February 9th ,1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. In 1952, an
accident with a BB gun caused Walker to lose sight in her right eye. Sensitive to her
appearance, she became withdrawn. During this time she wrote poetry, it strengthened her
skills as a writer. With the age of fourteen the scar tissue was removed and Walker received a
scholarship for disabled people and attended Spelman College. After two years she
transferred to Sarah Lawrence College, graduating in 1965. But another traumatic experience
occurred when Walker finds herself involuntarily pregnant whilst at college. She felt suicidal
and underwent an illegal abortion. But this second `scarring´ produced the same creative
impulse as the first: The first published work, a book of poetry called Once. While she was a
student at Spelman, Walker became an activist involved in the Civil Rights Movement. After
graduation, she moved to Mississippi, where she worked from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s
and where she married a white, jewish, Civil Rights lawyer, named Mel Leventhal. In 1969
they had a daughter, Rebecca, and they divorced in 1977. The novel The Color Purple, which
was published in 1983, brought Alice Walker national recognition as a writer. The novel won
her both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
2. Walker´s style of writing:
 Alice Walker is one of the most significant black American woman writer in the post-1950
era. She is a novelist, essayist, short fiction writer, children´s books writer, biographer,
lecturer and educator.
 The themes of Walker´s novels reflect her background; she frequently writes about the
experiences of blacks, particulary black women. Sexism and racism are prominent themes in
her works, but most of her writing has an underlying theme of survival.
 Experiences which she consistently cites as crucial to her development as a writer:
1. Trauma of being blinded by her brother
2. Involuntarily pregnancy
3. Involvement in the Civil Rigths Movement
 Color Purple – turning point in her career:
1) For the writing of it she moves to California in 1977
2) At this time she also divorces Mel Leventhal and sets up home with the black writer
Robert Allen and her daughter Rebecca
3) Publication of Color Purple brings popular and establishment acclaim
4) It also brings her into contact with Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones, who wanted to
make a film of The Color Purple
 The work of Zora Neale Hurston has shaped and informed Walker´s writing throughout
her career; she is a legitimating presence in the African American literary tradition.
3. Characters:
● Rannie Toomer:
Rannie is an ugly, black, uneducated and very poor woman, whose life is comparable to Alice
Walker’s childhood. As she is unmarried, her child Snooks is everything she has. She is naïve
in the beginning and hopes that the white doctor will help her child, but has to realize in the
end that trusting Sarah’s black magic is the only possibility.
● Sarah
Sarah is considered to be a witch and she knows that the community is the only thing which
Rannie can rely on, whereas a white doctor will never come to help Snooks.
Sarah personifies the black community and also the fact that women have to stick together
and can not trust the help of men.
● Snooks
Snooks is Rannie’s child, who “is dying from double pneumonia and whooping cough” (P.
80). He is in a very bad health state and doesn’t outlive his disease.
● Mailman
The mailman embodies the white people. He doesn’t have problems, sits in his warm car,
wears new clothes and is healthy and strong because he has enough to eat. His role is very
ironic, because he is the connection between two absolutely different worlds: he delivers the
circulars with nice products for rich people but Rannie can neither understand the circulars
nor afford the products. The mailman deals with Rannie in a very superficial way, doesn’t
listen to or care for her problems. In the end, he almost escapes from her problems and
doesn’t want to be bothered any longer. He feels repelled by her and dirty because of the
contact with her and her tears.
He represents the behaviour and attitude of the whole white society.
4. Time:
The short story does not include a explicit time reference. Objects such as the mailman’s car
or the circulars mentioned in the text point to a period of time after WWII.
5. Space
The short story is situated in a very poor area. Rannie lives in a very shabby hut: the house is
not isolated and it is very cold inside; the windows are grimy, the quilts are thin and pale.
Since the house is situated in a pasture, Rannie and Snooks are in a way living with animals.
Outside it is raining and the ground has turned into mud, what signifies that Rannie/the blacks
can not get out of their situation.
6. Language
The language can be considered as the sociolect of the blacks in the South. It is their
vernacular, which Alice Walker wanted to preserve for the future generations.
7. Narrator
The short story presents a overt narrator who is omniscient and omnipresent. The narrator
highly judges and comments on the figures in the narration. He has an inside view on the
characters’ feelings and thoughts. “Today he thought she looked more ignorant than usual...”
(p. 83) At some points the narrator’s report of what is going on seems to pass over into a free
indirect discourse giving a full and unclouded perspective on the characters’ minds. “He gave
her what he hoped was a big friendly smile. God! He didn’t want to hurt her feelings.” (p.83)
8. Historical Background
● It is important to see the historical reliance of African Americans on folk medicine. In the
past, slaves weren’t allowed to use traditional cures to treat any illness on there own. The
owners saw it as their responsability to cure the slaves with modern medicine. Therefore,
using traditional cures was one way of resitance to white ownership and a claim of
responsability for and control over their own bodies.
►Sarah’s talents as a traditional healer are a legacy of her culture’s active resistance to
oppression.
● “shot syndrom”: due to the usage of penicillin during WWII, shots were generally accepted
not because of their scientific proof, but they were known to be traditionally efficient.
9. Themes
● white society
vs.
black community
The entire story is interlaced with not only a sharp contrast of skin colours but also with the
difficult problem of a community in transition. On the one hand there is an economically
developed white society which excludes African Americans and their problems not only
mentally but geographically as well.
● culture
vs.
nature
Closely connected to the contrast above is the gap between culture and nature. The mailman
represents a white society that has a functioning health care system based on modern
scientific achivements which is not available for blacks. Sarah, a conjure woman, represents a
tradition of folk cure.
The gap is widened by Rannie’s inability to understand the function of the circulars which are
helpful to her in only one way, to paper the inside of her hut in order to keep the wind out.
● illusion
vs.
truth
Rannie clings to a double illusion about modern medicine. First, that one shot will cure her
baby, considering the shot to be an infallible miracle and second, that this shot will be
available upon demand in this moment of crises.
Sarah is fully aware of both of these illusions and of the racial discrimination connected to the
second one.
● young
vs.
old
Rannie’s and Sarah’s relationship can be seen as a conflict of two generations. Racism has
made blacks mistrust their own abilities and forced them into dependence of white culture of
which Rannie is a victim. For Rannie a white doctor is the only source of salvation, so she
turns away from African American culture even if this action is linked with the threat of
death. She ignores Sarah’s offer to help and treats her with intolerance. In opposition to that
Sarah is practicing her art of healing and therefore perpetuates a powerful tradition of
resistance to white racism, a cultural reality she wants Rannie to accept.
10. Symbolism
● horse tea:
There are folk cures that employ urine and horses as instruments of regenerative power, not
humiliation. The story is not constructed to demonstrate that the tea can actually revive
Snooks.
● pasture:
The pasture is a symbolic terrain where Rannie’s inability to move appropriatly in her
surroundings is shown. Rannie is not merely physically isolated in the pasture; she has
separated herself from her cultural heritage as well.
● circulars:
The advertisment in connection with the mailman are Rannie’s only link to a modern white
society which she doen’t understand.
● gray mare:
Seeing a gray mare is a sign of death.
Topics for a discussion:
● Does Sarah want to spare Rannie the trauma of seeing her own child die?
● Is Sarah seeking to humiliate Rannie for not respecting the profession of conjuring or teach
her a cruel but necessary lesson?
● Is Rannie’s turn to Sarah’s help despair or true belief in her healing powers?
● Can there be an epiphany seen in the story?
Literatur:
- Estes, Davi
Southern Folklore, 50:3, 1993 (213-29)
- Lauret, Maria. Alice Walker. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.
- Davidson, Cathy N. The Oxford Companion to Woman’s Writing in the United States.
Oxford University Press: New York, 1995.
http://www.nhti.edu/library/authorresources/walkerbib.htm
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap10/walker.html#books
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