The Take

In The Colour Purple, Alice Walker creates a realistic account of Colonialism and Capitalism at its worst, in the form of letters from Nettie. In her letter to Celie, Nettie gives an emotional account of the destruction of the small African village of Olinka at the hands of a “rubber manufacturer in England” (Walker 170). Walker illustrates how a “corporation” from England can so easily take over indigenous villages. The people of Olinka originally welcomed the roadbuilders, “preparing a feast” for them (Walker 169). But when they realized that they were building the road right through the village and “had guns…with orders to shoot”, they had no choice but to watch their village collapse (Walker 170). All the natural resources “giant mahogany trees, all the trees, the game, everything of the forest was being destroyed” (Walker 170). Walker demonstrates how the indigenous people become displaced, exploited and the modern cycle of third world poverty begins; “the worst was yet to be told. Since Olinka no longer owned their village, they must pay rent for it, and in order to use the water, which no longer belongs to them, they must pay a water tax” (Walker 171). Walker illustrates through a letter, a seemingly personal account, the process of corporate privatization of natural resources in third world countries. Rhetorically, Walker uses the device of epistolary form to bring realism to a very real problem, a problem that still exists today, “privatization of the essential infrastructure, water, power, is strangling up the agricultural community [in India]” and perpetuates the cycle of poverty (Roy 76).