Over the years, people have had many different experiences in the United States. Differences between people, times, and many other factors cause changes in a country's lifestyles, giving us different perspectives on what the United States was like. Although the main characters in the novels The Color Purple by Alice Walker and The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown lived completely different lives, they were both able to provide insight into experiences, culture, and history of the United States. the society in which they lived. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay To begin with, both novels described what the American culture in which they each lived was like. In The Color Purple, the main character, Celie, was a poor African-American girl who was given to a man to be his wife, but Celie explained, "He beat me like he beat children" (Walker 22). In American culture, during the time Celie worked for her husband, African American men dominated African American women. Men treated their wives like slaves, even though they were all lower class in America. In The Boys in the Boat, Joe did not grow up in an ideal home as his father told him, “…he should leave home. Joe was ten” (Brown 36). Joe's father chose his new wife over his own child. At that time, the Great Depression was going on, so many people were doing everything they could to cut back on their spending, and this was one way to do it. These two books have completely different plots, but they both demonstrate how American culture had an effect on their lives. Additionally, in each book there is information about American society as it was at the time the story took place. In The Color Purple, it is evident that whites are prioritized over African Americans when the mayor's wife, Miss Millie, asks Sofia, "...Would you like to work for me, be my maid?" (Walker 85). This shows how African Americans in the United States were treated very poorly by Caucasians. Discrimination and segregation in American society was at an incredible rate during this time and was getting worse over time. The company was also seen in The Boys in the Boat when it explained that "it was the fourth year of the Great Depression" (Brown 8). At that time, one in four Americans, or ten million people, was unemployed. American society was in a very unstable state. The degree of stability often changes in each country and this is evident when these two books are compared. Finally, these characters both go through different American experiences. Celie, for example, had very few opportunities in life, so when she got the chance, when Shug told her, "You're coming back to Tennessee with me," she quickly accepted (Walker 177). Celie didn't have many choices in life, like many African Americans at that time. African Americans in the United States were of a much lower social class and status during this time. In the book The Boys in the Boat, for example, the young men on the boat had a dream and they “…worked harder than ever to finish first in the 1936 Berlin Olympics” (Brown 351). The only thing these boys had to do, to achieve their dreams, was to have pure dedication and commitment to their team. In this American generation there were many.