Shannon Colmo
Honors English III
Mr. Jennings
May 21, 2012
Reflection
This journey was started by finding the correct book to read for myself. Something that holds
your interest and isn’t so dull that you fall asleep while reading it. I am very content with my choice in
The Color Purple because even though it was not particularly up beat it was still a novel that contained
pages and pages of content that could be analyzed. When I first started reading it I had no idea what I
was getting myself into. This book was a shock but it was nice to read a type of novel that I had not
previously experienced. Once I had read the book and all of the information was locked in my head it
was time to begin the writing of my literary analysis. I had no shortage of information to use. I found it
very simple to find databases that had the same opinions on the novel as I did, most of them revolving
around names and male/female dominance. These databases were huge helps and proved many points
in my analysis. The Color Purple was published in 1982 so the decade for my History essay was the
1980’s. When I first started gathering information to write this essay the only previous knowledge I had
on the 80’s was about the Olympics. I have used the 1980 Olympics in basically every essay I’ve written
since I read a book on it last summer, because it relates to every Americans way of life. That did become
the greatest focal point of my History essay and my synthesis because that event is what I had the most
prior knowledge about thus making it easier to relate too. To begin writing the history I made a timeline
of important events that had impacted American culture, politics, and economics. Once I had a basic
outline I was able to sit down and pick through them to see which ones would make the final cut into
the essay. I used books from SLU library and one internet site to do my research on these events. The
synthesis was a whole project in itself because I had to connect a book that was written in the 1980’s
about the 1940’s and connecting it to the culture in the decade of the 1980’s. I relayed the characters
and events in the color purple to the players and the miracle game in the 1980 winter Olympics. This
allowed for a simple let thorough connection between The Color Purple and the decade of the 1980’s.