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 von Nordheim 2 1960's Jackson, Mississippi, but various historical significances are severely lacking through out the book. The book can be hard for some to “swallow” due to its lack of historical sufferings, daily sufferings, and the way the characters are portrayed. Addres... ... middle of paper ... ...t have the permission to do so. Cooper was later quoted saying that the similarities between her life and Aibileen's where embarrassing and that the relationships between the worker and the employer were humiliating. At one point in the book Aibileen compares her color to the color of a cockroach. Stockett leaves out many different ways that the black women would stand up for themselves through out history and leaves all of the rescuing to Skeeter, a young white woman. The Help is not a bad book, it is an easy read that got turned in to an award-winning movie. It approaches a very touchy subject in American history and could have been executed in a more eye opening way. Stockett should have done better research and incorporated more of the von Nordheim 5 historical struggles, daily struggles, and should have been more sensitive in the depiction of her characters.
... setback, the creativity and strength of her work largely overshadows this weakness to the readers’ eye . She has masterly assembled in considerable detail the historical accounts of the story showing acute sensitivity to the intricacies of human relations as dictated by prejudice, bias, power and the passage of time.
Lily’s biases in The Secret Life Of Bees have altered greatly; she now knows that people of color have the ability to fend for themselves, and that they can be strong and influential people. The most outstanding thing that has caused Lily’s biases to change is the Boatwright sisters. August Boatwright was the person that took Lily by surprise, Lily was raised with this false philosophy that because she was white, she was superior, more intelligent than African Americans. “At my school they made fun of colored people’s lips and noses. I myself laughed at these jokes, hoping to fit in.
McCormick, R. P. (1970). Essays on Jacksonian America (1st ed., Vol. 5). (F. O. Gatell, Ed.) Los Angeles: Holt, Rinehert and Winston, Inc.
Shortly after arriving in Mississippi, the youth was put to work in picking cotton with the rest of his cousins. On one particularly hot day and after picking cotton, Emmett and a few other black boys went to a local store in Money, Mississippi. The store, which was owned and ran by a young white couple named Carolyn and Roy Bryant, catered mainly to the black field workers in the small to...
Being her first published novel, I think author Kathryn Stockett did a terrific job at writing, “The Help.” This novel won awards from Goodreads, The Choice Awards, best fiction and was voted the New York Times number one bestseller. I like how this novel is based around the theme of prejudice, making it easier to understand because prejudice is a big thing in our history. “I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain’t a colour, disease ain’t the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it comes in ever white child’s life - when they start to think that coloured folks ain’t as good as whites… I pray that wasn’t her moment, pray I still got time.” I also liked how the author, Kathryn Stockett, gave each character a southern accent, therefore the novel came across as more realistic. The ‘flow’ of the novel is easy to follow and isn’t
Mississippi serves as a catalyst for the realization of what it is truly like to be a Negro in 1959. Once in the state of Mississippi, Griffin witnesses extreme racial tension, that he does not fully expect. It is on the bus ride into Mississippi that Griffin first experiences true racial cruelty from a resident of Mississippi.
Growing up on the North/South Carolina border, Jackson’s exact state of birth is debatable. Unlike most historians, Jacksons ascertained that he was from South Carolina. Wherever he actually grew up, it is unequivocal that it was a truculent and violent place to be raised. During his childhood, Jackson became accustomed to the social imperatives of the land; hard work, and military spirit. Specifically, in his hometown, one used “[their ]military spirit to defend yourself, and [their] hands to pull something out of the soil”. Here, Meachem believes the constant exhaustion and threat of violence was “one of the many reasons Jackson became a man who was so prone to violence. He grew up with it, he didn’t know anything else”.
The story takes in the city of Spokane, Washington. Jackson provides the reader with a sense of his family history when he states “….my people have lived within a hundred mile radius of Spokane, Washington for at least ten thousand years.” Jackson uses direct characterization to describe himself. In the second paragraph, Jackson states “I grew up in Spokane, moved to Seattle twenty-three years ago for college, flunked out after two semesters, worked various blue- and bluer-collar jobs, married two or three times, fathered two or three kids, and then went crazy.” This implies that Jackson was not always homeless. He is education and at one point led a normal life. Over time Jackson began to lose himself and his self-worth. Jackson is unsure of the cause but says “piece by piece, I disappeared. I’ve been disappearing ever since.” Jackson has a very honest attitude when expressing his thoughts and feelings.
Characters in The Help are faced with an array of conflicts relating to their gender that confine them to a life that they are not satisfied with, but with time they grow the courage to lead the life they choose. Although, Skeeter is unable to speak her mind because society perceives her gender to be unknowledgable and overall useless other than completing the roles played by the typical housewife, she finds her voice. Skeeter becomes conscious of her community looking down on her for having a great deal of ambition in pursuing her career as a writer rather than finding a husband. Her quest to become a writer was not an easy one; she experienced a variety of struggles. Not only did her mother not support her, but most places were not hiring women. Stockett writes, “My eyes drift down to HELP WANTED: MALE. There are at least four columns filled with
The Help is a perfect example of a book that has a lot of strong characters who are being held down by segregation. Specifically this book is talking about the unfair discrimination against colored people in the U.S. in the early nineteen sixties. Many people, mostly those being discriminated against, were angry about the injustices that they had endured and had a breaking point at some part of their lives. This was the point when those people decided that somehow they would change the wrong doings that affected people like them and make others see things their way, “it weren’t too long before I seen something in me had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside a me. And I just didn’t feel so accepting anymore” (Stockett 2). It was a tough time fo...
...te the book, or if the story allowed for Aibileen to be in charge of her own freedom and tell her story, The Help would be relabeled as African-American fiction marginalized by its topic and not half as accepted as it has. Having the author express her interpretation of Black southern dialect to channel these women is accepted more by society which shows that oppression of black women still exist. Allowing for Miss Skeeter to try and befriend the black maids in favor of the truth is much more shocking to our culture systems. Unfortunately though, this construction is self-serving for those who accept the authors account of the story because while Skeeter gets to leave Jackson, move to New York, and presumably begin a fabulous life, Minny, Aibileen, and all the other maids are stuck to face the wrath of her doing which is the continued oppression of black women.
She is tired of white people looking down on her and at the end of the day she wants change, not for her, but for her children. Minny knew what they were doing was for the greater good. “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett is a story that takes you through the ups and downs of living in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960’s. With the bravery of these 3 brave women they were able to write and release a book about being the help. The help of the.
In the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry, the receivers are the only people who have feelings and memories. The elders are the people who choose what the best is for their people in the community and sometimes they go to the receiver for help on making the right decisions. The people from the community do not see color, or have freedom on making a decision for them. There is no love, feelings, and grandparents. Jonas is assigned to be the next receiver of the community; He was trained by the giver, who transfers memories of the pain and pleasures of life, who also shows him the truth and reality that is hidden to the community. Jonas’s community does not represent the ideal of society because there are no choices or distinctions between men and women. This people from the community are assigned to a role in the community, where they do it until they are old and sent to the House of the old and wait for their release.
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.
The movie The Help was an inspirational film that has opened the minds of the audience to the harsh reality that African Americans faced. Ethical issues portrayed in the movie is the way which all