Alice Walker employs the technique of color symbolism in the story “Am I Blue?”In the culture to which she belongs, African-American, blue color is associated with trust and stability. It also signifies peace and tranquility-and sometimes, melancholy too. It depends upon the situation and the mood of the person interacting with the color. One can certainly say that the blue color is the greatest asset of Nature Blue is the color of the sky, water and light.
The sun and the moon have intimate relationship with the moods (waves) of the blue sea. The title of the story,” Am I blue?” could be the question that continued to haunt Alice Walker, throughout her life in one way of the other. She had to undergo both- physical and mental unhappiness, and so her meaningful question in the story, “Am I blue?”(Looks like a question to her inner-self—Am I peaceful?Am I tranquil?-Perhaps she is not!) Alice Walker is a sensitive individual. Her referral to humanity is, if plants can live together and in the broader sense, when mother Nature is so benevolent to humanity, why human beings do not reciprocate the same feelings of love and kindness, to the ‘less evolved’ mute animal kingdom?I entirely agree with Alice Walker about the necessity to show kindness to animals both from the ecological and spiritual points of views.
Man claims that he is the crown of creation. Is it his self-proclamation or he deserves the crown on account of his qualities?As per the conditions prevailing and as for his disposition to the animal kingdom, he treats them as the source of proteins and dumps them in the graveyard called his stomach. His taste buds advise him—how nice, you have done the right thing!Through this story she gives vent to her feelings of deep love for the animals. “Am I blue?” is about an intense relationship between a horse and a woman.
She argues that there are human qualities in animals. Ms. Alice Walker, you are again highly considerate to the animals, but some of the intelligent animals may lodge protest against your otherwise well-intentioned observation—that animals have human qualities.The quality of any animal is pure and divine and it acts true to its nature. They never try to cheat and outsmart the fellow creatures. Even the most ferocious animal, the Lion, doesn’t kill animals for fancy.
He does it just for his daily requirement of food and there is a method in his operation. He doesn’t kill the animals for their leather and for making fancy purses! He doesn’t torture them for weaving angora shawls! He doesn’t make the elephant fall into the camouflaged ditch for extracting the ivory!In the story, the tender relationship develops with the regular feeding of Blue (the name of the horse).Many years roll by. That relationship, which passes through many stages, makes the monumental difference in her attitudes towards the animal kingdom and humanity as a whole.
She then goes to describe another type of relationship between Brown (another horse) and Blue, sort of a contractual relationship, and human beings are responsible for arranging this relationship. Alice Walker establishes in all stages of the story that the animals know and understand that their companions are scared, bored, lonely, ill or happy!They say, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Alice Walker belongs to the second category. At every stage of her life destiny played its part, but in those stages, her tremendous grit and will power was on her side, and she showed that she is the creator of her destiny, not the victim!She was just 8, when her older brother accidentally shot her in the eye rendering her blind in her one eye. Wherever there was injustice, especially concerning women, Alice Walker was there- Race prejudice, animal rights, and civil rights movement etc.
Marjorie Spiegel’s book The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery greatly fascinated her and she saw no difference between the modern-day treatment of animals and the enslavement of the black people. What happens to Blue, when her partner is forcibly taken away from her? Alice Walker describes it poignantly: “I dreaded looking into his eyes--because I had of course noticed that Brown, his partner, had gone--but I did look. If I had been born into slavery, and my partner had been sold or killed, my eyes would have looked like that.The children next door explained that Blue's partner had been "put with him," (the same expression that old people used, I had noticed, when speaking of an ancestor during slavery that had been impregnated by her owner) so that they could mate and she conceive. Since that was accomplished, she had been taken back by her owner, who lived somewhere else.
” (Voice...)The helplessness of the animal is given by her through the pathetic description. She writes further, “He looked always and always toward the road down which his partner had gone. And then, occasionally, when he came up for apples, or I took apples to him, he looked at me.
It was a look so piercing, so full of grief, a look so human.”(Voice…)
