Celie, then, is still uncertain about why she is physically abused, and there is another person who is also "uncertain" in this chapter: Harpo. He thinks that he's ready to get married, but he is as ignorant about love and sexuality and courtship as Celie was when she first began writing her letters to God. Harpo is seventeen, but he seems much younger because he is so certain that he loves a girl whom he has never even spoken to; indeed, it is his very certainty that makes him seem all the more immature. The two young people, as we pointed out, have never even spoken; they have merely exchanged a wink and returned a scared, shy look. Yet, to Harpo, this is "love," and he is sure that he's ready to be a husband. But with Harpo's having a fierce father for a role model as a husband, we can be fairly certain that Harpo will probably become another womanizer and a wife beater. Another cycle of brutality, it seems, is innocently and ignorantly being set in motion.
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