The Color Purple

[Kill_Me_Please]

I've been reading Alice Walker's The Color Puprle and found it quite difficult. Can you help me to understand the highlighted parts of the following sentences, please?

Mr. ______ come finally one day looking all drug out.

I open the door cautious, thinking bout robbers and murderers. Horsethieves and hants.

She standing there looking me straight in the eye. She look tired and her jaws full of air.

I don’t know what to do, I’m so beside myself. I stand there in the middle of the kitchen. Mind whirling. I feels like Who Would Have Thought.

I lavish butter on a hot biscuit, sort of wave it about.

Thank you.

 

[GoesStation]

All drug out = extremely tired. Drug is a dialectal past participle of drag.

Hants (sometimes written "haints") are the things that haunt a place: ghosts.

I'm not sure what jaws full of air means.

In I feels like Who Would Have Thought, the capitalization is an alternative to the conventional quotation marks. The character feels that an observer might express surprise at the situation, saying "Who would have thought it?!"

Wave it about means what it says: she holds the biscuit in her hand and moves it around in the air.

 

[Tdol]

If her jaws were full of air, did she not have much to say?

 

[Kill_Me_Please]

Hello, can you help me again with Color Purple, the highlighted parts, please?

He smooth down his mustache, run his tongue out the corners of his lips. What you know good, Miss Celie? he say. Not much, I say.

She the woman he wanted to marry. She call him Albert, tell him his drawers stink in a minute.

Shug say, Wellsah, and I thought it was only whitefolks do freakish things like that.

Sometime Swain come with his box, Harpo cook dinner, and me and Mr. ______ and the prizefighter bring our preshation.

And dance, she say. Nobody dance like Albert when he was young. Sometime us did the moochie for a hour.

She say, Times like this, lulls, us ought to do something different.

Don’t git uppity, she say. But you don’t have a dress do nothing for you. You not made like no dress pattern, neither.

You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say. It’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation.

I'm making progress, it's a great book. Thank you.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Hello, can you help me again with Color Purple, the highlighted parts, please?

He smooth down his mustache, run his tongue out the corners of his lips. What you know good, What have you learned Miss Celie? he say. Not much Very little, I say.

She the woman he wanted to marry. She call him Albert, tell him his drawers underwear stink in a minute.

Shug say, Wellsah Well, sir, and I thought it was only whitefolks do freakish things like that.

Sometime Swain come with his box, Harpo cook dinner, and me and Mr. ______ and the prizefighter bring our preshation appreciation.

And dance, she say. Nobody dance like Albert when he was young. Sometime us did the moochie a popular dance of the period for a hour.

She say, Times like this, lulls Quiet times times when there are lulls in activity, us ought to do something different.

Don’t git uppity, she say. But you don’t have a dress do nothing for you. You don't have a dress that looks good on you. You not made like no dress pattern, You don't have the right figure for a nice dress pattern neither.

You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say. It’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation die and go to Heaven.

I'm making progress, it's a great book. Thank you.

Yes, it is!

 

[Skrej]

I took 'jaws full of air' to mean she was yawning, given the context of her looking tired.

 

[Kill_Me_Please]

Hello again, these are my final questions. Can you help me with the highlighted phrases, please?

Plus, Darlene trying to teach me how to talk. She say US not so hot. A dead country give-away. You say US where most folks say WE, she say, and peoples think you dumb.

Reefer, say Harpo. What kind of a thing is that? Something make you feel good, I say. Something make you see visions. Something make your love come
down.

Of course it was impossible to ignore the presence of an aging white woman accompanied by a small black child. The ship was in a tither. Each day she and
the child walked about the deck alone, groups of white people falling into silence as they passed.

Yeah, she say, Germaine. I don’t know who gave him that flittish name, but it suit him.

Right, I say. Whitefolks sign for they parents. They was so mad to git throwed out and told they was naked they made up they minds to crush us wherever they find us, same as they would a snake.

Thank you and kind regards from Belgrade, Serbia.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Hello again, these are my final questions. Can you help me with the highlighted phrases, please?

Plus, Darlene trying to teach me how to talk. She say US not so hot. A dead country give-away.

In that sentence:

- dead means accurate, decisive, incontrovertable.
- country means rural and, Darlene believes, ignorant.
- a give-away is something that reveals something - it gives a secret away to the world.

So Darlene is saying that the narrator's bad grammar proves that she's an uneducated rural woman. See the next sentence:

You say US where most folks say WE, she say, and peoples think you dumb.

Reefer, say Harpo. What kind of a thing is that? Something make you feel good, I say. Something make you see visions. Something make your love come
down.

Marijuana is something that makes you amorous, horny - in British English, randy.

Of course it was impossible to ignore the presence of an aging white woman accompanied by a small black child. The ship was in a tither.

The people on the ship were agitated.

Each day she and the child walked about the deck alone, groups of white people falling into silence as they passed.

Yeah, she say, Germaine. I don’t know who gave him that flittish

Effeminate. People used to call gay men flits.

name, but it suit him.

Right, I say. Whitefolks sign for they parents.

White people act as their parents acted. They learned to be racists from their parents. Again, see the next sentence:

They was so mad to git throwed out

God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden . . .

and told they was naked

. . . and taught them shame, modesty, embarassment.

they made up they minds to crush us wherever they find us, same as they would a snake.

Thank you and kind regards from Belgrade, Serbia.

You're welcome!

It's a difficult book. I'm glad that you're making your way through it.

 

[Skrej]

Reefer, say Harpo. What kind of a thing is that? Something make you feel good, I say. Something make you see visions. Something make your love come
down.

Marijuana is something that makes you amorous, horny - in British English, randy.

I think it actually means just the opposite. Marijuana is often perceived to inhibit the libido. While results certainly vary from person to person, the speaker's use of 'come down' seems to suggest decreased sex drive, to me.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I think it actually means just the opposite. Marijuana is often perceived to inhibit the libido. While results certainly vary from person to person, the speaker's use of 'come down' seems to suggest decreased sex drive, to me.

I'm explaining what I think the character is saying, not judging its accuracy.

Harpo is listing pot's virtues and wouldn't include love-making if pot didn't, in Harpo's opinion, improve it. The expression "come down" has several meanings in American slang. Some might be different than British English. Here, it more or less means make an appearance, make the scene, arrive, happen.