Brief Story Outline:
I am reviewing The Help by Kathryn Stockett.The Help is a powerful,truth-filled story set in the early 1960s in Jackson,Mississippi.It is a novel about black African American maids working in white households and being treated unfairly.
Characters:
The book is narrated from the first person perspectives of three women: Skeeter,Aibleen and Minny.The twenty two year old Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is the daughter of a prominent white family who has just graduated and wants to pursure her career as a writer but it’s 1960s and her mother will not be happy if she doesn’t have a ring on her finger. She has been brought up by black maids since she was young, and longs to find out why her much-loved maid, Constantine, has disappeared.Aibleen is a black,wise maid who is raising her seventeenth white child.She dedicates all her work time to Miss.Leeflot,while trying to heal the scars left by her own son’s death.Minny,Aibleen’s best frend is short,fat and the sassiest women in Mississippi.She is the best cook but she cannot mind her tongue resulting having being fired from nineteen jobs. Stockett’s characters are strong, sometimes bold, yet sometimes silent. She adds humor and fun, as well as danger and intrigue in the novel. She has done a great job writing from the point of view of numerous characters. All three of them had their own chapter.Every character has a personality, goals, and a backstory.
Tension:
Kathryn Stockett has very well managed tension in the novel.The novel starts with racial tension,which encouraged me to read the novel further as I am interested in racial issues.As we get further,tension spreads through the novel from racism to relationships,for example, Celia’s relationship with John.She shows lot...
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...in theme.The main theme is rasisms,blacks being treated unfairly and being discriminated by the whites.These type of books interest me a lot and The Help shows us that things can change.I also liked the other themes,for example,bravery,all three main characters were brave and took risk to make a difference.
I liked how at the end of each chapter,there was suspense which made it impossible for me to stop reading.
3 things I disliked:
I didn’t not dislike much in the novel but the only thing I didn’t like was the language and the dialogues in the novel.I thought it was very hard to understand the African American slang.I had to read the text several times to completely understand it.
Except for this I loved The Help Kathryn manages to merge fact and fiction perfectly, exploring different emotions ranging from sadness to happiness-at times all in the same paragraph.
The parts that I found boring were when there was a lot of description going on from the author. I do realize that it is necessary to set up the scenes and locations so that us as readers can have a better understanding of what is happening in the book, however I felt like at times he went too far into detail and had me nearly sleeping at times, literally.
There were many parts of the book that had me hooked; I couldn’t stop reading no matter what was going on.
I found the book to be easy, exciting reading because the story line was very realistic and easily relatable. This book flowed for me to a point when, at times, it was difficult to put down. Several scenes pleasantly caught me off guard and some were extremely hilarious, namely, the visit to Martha Oldcrow. I found myself really fond of the char...
...ism and segregation, it is what will keep any society form reaching is maximum potential. But fear was not evident in those who challenged the issue, Betty Jo, Street, Jerry, and Miss Carrie. They challenged the issue in different ways, whether it was by just simply living or it was a calculated attempt to change the perspective of a individual. McLurin illustrated the views of the reality that was segregation in the South, in the town of Wade, and how it was a sort of status quo for the town. The memories of his childhood and young adulthood, the people he encountered, those individuals each held a key in how they impacted the thoughts that the young McLurin had about this issue, and maybe helping unlock a way to challenge the issue and make the future generation aware of the dark stain on society, allowing for more growth and maximum potential in the coming years.
The book was very inspiring and I think it covered a lot of great information. Something that Joanne Crutchfield managed to do very well was paint vivid pictures with her words. Everything was so detailed and descriptive, I was really drawn in by that. The use of imagery made the topics more relatable in a sense. I also liked how the book touched on the topic of mental health. Mental health issues affect everyone however, in the black community those health issues go unnoticed or unattended to. The Author shared her story of depression and how she dealt with it. I thought that aspect of the memoir was great, I think that it was wonderful that she shed a light on mental health. On the other hand the book was a little difficult to follow with the way the chapters were set up. Other than that I thought the book was good and I really
Although the main character in the book was white, the author, Sue Kidd, does a great job of depicting the African American culture during the time. Whether it was Rosaleen getting beat up in jail, or Zach dreaming of being a lawyer, this book showed you what it was like being a minority during a time when rights where still being fought for. One of the smaller conflicts in the story was a man verses man conflict, when Lily and Zach started to like each other. Though they knew that a colored man, and a white girl could never be together, they both were attracted to each other. Were they not from different cultures, people would have been fine with them dating, but because Zach was black, it couldn?t work out.
As for the analysis of the book itself, although the author aims toward providing a chronicle of two years in the lives of the two brothers, he actually ends up writing more about their mother. He discusses LaJoe's parents, how they met and married and why they moved to Horner. He depicts LaJoe as an extremely kind-hearted yet tough woman who will do anything to help not only her own family, but all the neighborhood children as well. LaJoe feeds and cares for many of the neighborhood children. For this, she is rare and special in an environment of black mothers who are prostitutes and drug addicts. She sticks by her children when most mothers would be ashamed and disown them. I finished this book feeling a great deal of respect and admiration for LaJoe and everytihg she went through.
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.
I think my favorite thing about this novel was the realistic ending. Some books try to just give you a fairy tale but this book had an ending that mad you think in the end if I was in the same position would I do the same thing. I didn’t like the fact that the novel portrayed mental illness in a way to say that it needed to be hidden and protected. I thought this novel was very believable for the time period that it was set in. I think the ending to this novel was perfect it was an accurate ending to this
Kathryn Stockett's book The Help has sold over five million copies and has spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. Stockett's book has also been made in to a major motion picture. The Help is a story about African American house maids based in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi. The story is told by three main women, Minny, Aibileen and Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are both African-American maids, while Skeeter is the daughter of a privileged family. Aibileen is raising another white child by the name of Mae Mobley whose mother does not participate in her care. Minny is working for an outcast, newlywed, white woman who is keeping her employment a secret from her husband. Skeeter is working on becoming a journalist and takes the risk of interviewing Minny and Aibileen for her book that she publishes. All meetings are done in secret. All of the maids Skeeter interviews talk of a woman named Hilly, who holds the ideal that whites are superior to African-Americans and intends to get everyone in her “ladies group” ( in which Skeeter is a member) to join in the ideal and embrace it. Hilly is one of the specific antagonists in this story, which ends in her demise. This story describes everyone in Hilly’s circle to a T, but it is published with an anonymous author and the names get changed so that no one can figure out who wrote it. Most people will “rant and rave” that Stockett's book is an amazing story of the struggle for African American's in
Kathryn Stockett is an author best known for her novel, The Help. This novel took place in Mississippi during the 1960s. It is about a girl who wants to be a writer, but doesn’t know what to write about. She ends up interviewing the black maids in her town about what it was like to work for white families, and then writes a book about all of the different stories told by the maids. Each chapter was a new maid, and when the book was published anonymously, a lot of people, including her friends, became very mad at the author. It made them question who the chapters were written about. The events in The Help were very similar to what was going on in the beginning of Stockett’s life. She took the events that she lived through and made them her inspiration for The Help.
What did you dislike about the book? The value of the book is limited in terms of the audience. The book is set in the 18th century which only historians can relate to. It, therefore, fails to relate to the modern society as the issue that were faced then are very different with what is currently being faced.
Stockett explores this early on in the novel, through the narrative perspectives of Miss Skeeter, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson. Miss Skeeter already defies the social expectations of white women in the 1960s; however, it is her devotion at considerable risk to a book featuring the real stories of black women working in white households, that could very well place her and others in danger. ‘All my life I’d been told what to believe about politics, coloureds, being a girl. But with Constantine’s thumb pressed into my hand, I realised I actually had a choice in what I could believe.’ –page 63. As the novel progresses Skeeter becomes more distant from her safe social status as her outlook on the world alters; and the readers realise that she has the most to gain and even more so, the most to loose. Likewise, the narrative perspectives of Aibileen and Minny see their struggle to break free of the status quo and push for equality. Comparably, Perkins uses Joe as an advocate for Indigenous rights, by not standing or singing for the national anthem at his school assembly. His father supports Joe; but his mother is more concerned for the consequences. She argues that her family made the choice to live in a way that is stereotypical to western society, ‘You can’t pick and choose, when it suits you.’ Sending the message that sometimes you need to comply with what expectations may stand in order to keep the
What I liked most about this book was the characters and how the author presented them. The book was written in second person so all their thoughts and emotions were shared with the reader. The violent family backgrounds were revealed very early in the story. This allowed me to become emotionally invested in the main characters. My reactions to their graphic sexual assaults, detailed later in the book, would have been different if I did not know the history of abuse and violence. I often had to put the book down for a few moments to remind myself that these characters are not real people that I
In the story “The Help” written by Kathryn Stockett we are taken back in time to Jackson, Mississippi in August of 1962, were 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 its is like to be the help. The 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.