Analysis Of The Book The Help By Kathryn Stockett

813 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Problems with racism in literature

Kalie Anderson Anderson 1
Mrs. O’Brien
English 9
April 7, 2014
Binding Fact and Fiction
The novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a New York Time’s bestseller, and with good reason. This work explores and uncovers numerous amounts of topics other books and writers would shy away from. Such as, but not limited to, racism, discrimination, prejudice, and segregation in the South during the nineteen-sixties. It also examines the lives of multiple characters including Skeeter Phelan, a writer determined to expose the hidden lives of the black maids in her community, Minny Jackson and Aibileen Clark, two colored maids living in Jackson, Mississippi during this time period. In addition to that, this novel helps create a sense of clarity and understanding of the lives of the colored in the early stages of the Civil Rights movement. Also, this work contains numerous important plot points that help reel readers in, creating a whirlwind of events that anyone would be interested in. However, none of this would be important without the location this novel takes place. Being the south, Mississippi provides the perfect setting to help add more roadblocks to the quest of three women against the world.
During the course of this work, many ideas and themes are portrayed and readers are able to view subjects that surround the main topic of racial injustice and intolerance. With the three main narrators, Minny Jackson, Aibileen Clark, and Skeeter Phelan, the audience quickly gains an insight on how racial inequalities affected everyone. These thoughts help to form a plot that can easily keep readers entertained throughout the novel. During the course of the novel, there are many points in the plot that decide the actions and events other cha...

... middle of paper ...

..., the ending of The Help presents numerous chances for most of the characters to achieve their goals and better themselves and their futures.
In conclusion, the ideas of prejudice and racial discrimination are the binding of the story, providing readers with an interest and a longing to finish the book. The novel also incorporates a various amount of details and important events that shaped the book to complete supremacy. Including hostile actions and fallouts of friends, the rebellion of the overbearing minority, and the complete destruction of a an everyday town. Also, the ending of the work involves the type of ending the general public expects, with a twist of heartache for the characters that did not quite come out on top. To conclude, The Help is a very popular book due to it’s tear jerking plot twists and down to earth characters almost anybody can relate to.

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Celia, A Slave By Melton A. Mclaurin

    960 Words  | 2 Pages

    The novel showed a pivotal point prior to the Civil War and how these issues ultimately led to the fueling of quarrel between Americans. While such institutions of slavery no longer exist in the United States, the message resonates with the struggles many groups ostracized today who continue to face prejudice from those in higher

    Read More

  • Allusions In The Help

    837 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Help is a novel written in 2009 about African-American maids working in Southern homes in the 1960’s and a young white woman pursuing to write a book about the maid’s lives. Stockett was born in 1969 in Jackson, Mississippi. She worked in magazine publishing in New York before attempting to publish The Help, which was rejected by 60 different literary agents. Stockett’s personal background played a major part in her ability to tell this story so well. She grew up with African-American maids working in her household and grew up shortly after the decade in which this novel takes place. The society that she grew up in and her experience working in a magazine helped her to write from the personal viewpoint of African-American help and a woman striving to become a journalist in America during the 1960’s. In The Help, Stockett uses specific setting, point of view, and allusions to tell the incredible story of three young women of different ages, backgrounds, and race that join together in a work that readers will never forget.

    Read More

  • Racism Has Changed Between The 1930's And Today

    956 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this book, it shows examples of racial strife including segregation, physical attacks and emotional abuse. The Logan family was treated indescribably. The book starts showing racial strife when the children of the black family have to go to a different school than the white children for that very reason. This book shows the way racism started in the 1930’s and how much it’s changed compared to today.

    Read More

  • Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

    739 Words  | 2 Pages

    Paton is able to convey the idea of racial injustice and tension thoroughly throughout the novel as he writes about the tragedy of “Christian reconciliation” of the races in the face of almost unforgivable sin in which the whites treat the blacks unjustly and in return the blacks create chaos leaving both sides uneasy with one another. The whites push the natives down because they do no want to pay or educate them, for they fear “ a better-paid labor will also read more, think more, ask more, and will not be conten...

    Read More

  • Kathryn Stockett's The Help

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    Everyone is faced with trials and tribulations throughout their whole life. The saying “life is 10% what happens to you and 90% is your attitude towards it” was made famous by well known Christian extraordinaire, Charles R. Swindle. I strongly agree with this statement and try to live my life by it. In “The Help”, we spend some time getting to know two of the ladies in this story, Minny Jackson and Celia Rae Foote. Now these ladies could hardly be any more different, however they seem to be dependent on each other for various different reasons. As the story unfolds we learn more of their back story and who they really are as people. I strongly believe that in Kathryn Stockett’s “The Help”, Stockket uses three significant subplots to show their growth as dynamic characters.

    Read More

  • Chapter Summary: The Help

    1774 Words  | 4 Pages

    The book “The Help” takes place in Jackson, Mississippi and is told in Miss Skeeter, Aibleen,and Minny’s perspective. The first chapter is told in Aibleen’s perspective. She begins to talk about Miss Elizabeth Leefolt’s 2 year old white daughter, Mae Mobley, a neglected and physically abused child. During the first chapter Aibleen begins to discuss the death of her beloved son, Treelore, who tragically died in a preventable accident. This devastating event happened a couple months before she started to work for Elizabeth Leefolt.The incident affects Aibleen internally throughout the story.

    Read More

  • Brief Comparison Of Hiram Hillburn And Eugenia Phelan

    1217 Words  | 3 Pages

    Most women in Mississippi never cared to be something over than married and being a mother, however, Skeeter was very diverse. Unlike many women, Skeeter has goals of becoming a writer, she planned to accomplish. Nevertheless, an opportunity arose for Skeeter to become a writer but with possible consequences for her and the maids involved. The brilliant idea of writing a book based on all the stories of black maids and their conflicts was Skeeter’s opportunity and gave black women their voice in the world. While Skeeter gets an earful of the maids’ stories she begins to apprehend how little she knew of the truth about the life of black women. In other words, Skeeter learns of the threats, abuse, and humiliation they go through everyday. In addition to this, Skeeter begins to disagree with the rumors about black people and their mistreatment. Consequently, Skeeter becomes an outcast in her social group of friends and embrace the black community, however not too openly for if she is caught she will be put in great danger. As a matter of a fact, Skeeter has her own story to tell in the book for she was raised by a black woman, Constantine. Throughout Skeeter’s childhood and into adulthood Constantine raised and cared for her, not to mention she was also Skeeter’s role model because she was always there for Skeeter and gave unforgettable advice.

    Read More

  • Aibileen Attempts To Offer The Societal Norm In The Help

    747 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although Aibileen has her doubts about going up against the racial superiority belief, she decides to aid Skeeter in writing Help. Aibileen says, “‘And my cousin Shinelle in Cauter County? They burn up her car cause she went down to the voting station’” (Stockett 120). In the 1960s, violence against African Americans was common and frequent. By helping write Help, Aibileen is putting herself at risk to be a target of one of these violent outbursts. The threat of violence is worth it in Aibileen’s mind because she is finally able to call attention upon the unfair conditions she is put through everyday, in hopes that this will cause people to think

    Read More

  • How Does Stockett Use Satire In The Help

    326 Words  | 1 Pages

    Kathryn Stockett's award-winning novel, The Help, is about three women in Mississippi whose determination to start a movement change the way people of different races view one another. Skeeter has just graduated with a degree and hopes to get a job with writing, but her mother is desperate to marry her off. Aibileen and Minny, two African American maids, have never thought of writing about racial issues until Skeeter approaches them with the idea of publishing a book documenting a black maid's life in the South. Together, the three women and a number of other maids secretly compile their working experiences, from humorous accounts to dangerous ones. I enjoyed reading The Help because Stockett uses humorous writing when applicable and a serious

    Read More

  • The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    Feminist theory is a term that embraces a wide variety of approaches to the questions of a women’s place and power in culture and society. Two of the important practices in feminist critique are raising awareness of the ways in which women are oppressed, demonized, or marginalized, and discovering motifs of female awakenings. The Help is a story about how black females “helped” white women become “progressive” in the 1960’s. In my opinion, “The Help” I must admit that it exposes some of our deepest racial, gender, and class wounds as individuals and social groups, and that the story behind the story is a call to respect our wounds and mutual wounding so that healing may have a chance to begin and bring social injustice to an end. The relationship between Blacks and whites in this novel generally take on the tone of a kindly, God-fearing Jesus Christ-loving Black person, placidly letting blacks and whites work out their awkwardness regarding race and injustice. Eventually both the black and white women realize how similar they are after all, and come to the conclusion that racism is an action of the individual person, a conclusion mutually exclusive of racism as an institutionalized system that stands to demonize and oppress people based on the color of their skin and the location of their ancestry.

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Help by Kathryn Stockett

    1282 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the story “The Help” written by Kathryn Stockett, we are taken back in time to Jackson, Mississippi in August of 1962, where we meet three women by the name of Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are black women who work for white families as the help. Skeeter is a young white woman in her early twenties who befriends the other two and gets them to tell their stories of what it is like to be the help. They reluctantly hesitate, but eventually give in knowing that the stories they are telling are more important than the negative impact it could have on their lives. While reading “ The Help” you cannot help but notice the symbolism that drips from almost every page.

    Read More

  • Who Is The Antagonist In The Help

    676 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Help written by Kathryn Stockett is a astonishing novel taken place in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. The Help was written to portray the broken lives of black maids, that worked for white women. Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till by Simeon Wright and Herb Boyd, is a fascinating autobiography about Simeon Wright’s story. An autobiography that describes the events that filled the conscience of the nation and gave birth to the current day Civil Rights Movement in America. Both Kathryn Stockett’s novel, and Simeon Wrights autobiography show us that injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.

    Read More

  • Exploring The Controversial Themes in 'The Help'

    1892 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Help takes place in the 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. During this time, there was violence toward all African Americans. This was organized by a group called the Ku Klux Klan. “The racial terrorism ranged from cross-burnings and church-bombings to beatings and murder” (Media). This book articulates the difficulty of being colored because it is found as a minority group in society that is fallaciously treated as subhuman. When writing from the perspective of the black maids Stockett uses an antiquated form of speech that makes the maids sound uneducated. Stockett starts from the very beginning of the novel. Aibileen says, “Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that’s what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning” (Stockett 1). This represents how black people talked, but show how hard they always worked without getting any compliments. Racism takes place when Hilly Holbrook, one of the antagonist, tries to push through a sanitation initiative so that all the white homeowners have a separate bathroom outside for their black maids. Hilly says, “All these house they’re building without maid’s quarters? It’s just plain

    Read More

  • The Help Movie Analysis

    875 Words  | 2 Pages

    For this assignment, the movie “The Help” was chosen to review and analyze because it presents a story of fighting injustice through diverse ways. The three main characters of the movie are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson, two colored maids. Throughout the story, we follow these three women as they are brought together to record colored maids’ stories about their experiences working for the white families of Jackson. The movie explores the social inequalities such as racism and segregation between African Americans and whites during the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi.

    Read More

  • Kathryn Stockett's The Help

    411 Words  | 1 Pages

    The help is a novel about black and white race discrimination. The racism is the main motif in this book. The author, Kathryn Stockett, inspired by the civil rights movement of African Americans in the 1960s, that was the motive that she started to write ‘The help’. She was against the social issue, racism.

    Read More

More about Analysis Of The Book The Help By Kathryn Stockett

Open Document