Psychological Themes In The Movie 'The Help'

563 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Prejudice and discrimination in today

Within this paper, you will witness the struggles of society for colored men and women, while particularly seeing what these maids have endured. We come across many psychological themes throughout this movie, most importantly to me, aggression and violence, racism, ethical issues and resolution.

Psychological Themes of The Help As we watched “The Help”, we witnessed many psychological themes. This movie was an eye opener to many aspects in society then and now, including aggression and violence, ethical issues, racism and resolution. During the movie, we follow along with Skeeter, an active novelist, as she walks with the maids step by step to discover the truths about working with white families. These strong, brave women are referred to as “the help”, hints the name of the book they came together to write. Aggression and violence is something we haven’t been able to neither withstand or ignore in any part of society. It is something we will always deal with on a weekly, or even daily basis. This was shown well throughout the …show more content…

We have discriminated humans for their color, as we forget what is on the inside is all the same. Throughout this movie, ethical issues and racism take a huge stand. During a conversation at lunch with the Junior League, Hilly expressed how maids should not be allowed to use the restroom in the house because they could carry diseases and harm their children. Racism builds off of ignorance. During the movie, Aibileen thought she was on her normal bus ride home until the bus stops and a police officer walks on, to inform everyone that a negro had been shot, all blacks must exit now and he will get everyone else as close to wherever they are trying to go. He showed no worry for Aibileen and her male friend who had to each walk home alone, during such a terrifying time and place. There was no sympathy or respect for them, as they are just the same as the rest, which is why they wanted

Show More
Related

  • Social Existing Issues Depicted in Fruitvale Station

    1188 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...

    Read More

  • Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman?

    1623 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...

    Read More

  • Response to Movie Ethnic Notions

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    The film observes and analyzes the origins and consequences of more than one-hundred years of bigotry upon the ex-slaved society in the U.S. Even though so many years have passed since the end of slavery, emancipation, reconstruction and the civil rights movement, some of the choice terms prejudiced still engraved in the U.S society. When I see such images on the movie screen, it is still hard, even f...

    Read More

  • You is Kind. You is Smart. You is Important.

    834 Words  | 2 Pages

    Overall, the purpose of the movie is to recreate life in the early 1960’s of black maids, white women, and their relationships with each other. The unspoken stories of black women and their experience’s in providing services to white women are a narrative of civil rights in America1.The Help is not so much about the degraded black servants as it is about their white sympathizers.

    Read More

  • Aptitudes In Annie Stockett's The Help

    371 Words  | 1 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Role Of Blackness In The Fire Next Time By James Baldwin

    1121 Words  | 3 Pages

    The themes that are addressed in the novel, including the psychological effects of racism on Black people and the denial of white people to address the issue of race reinforce the idea that psychological inferiority, just like the white and Black identity, are creations that perpetuate a society that will benefit one group and work to the destroy the other. Without the moral consciousness and accountability of the rulers of America’s society, the relationship of African Americans to the United States will continue to be spiritually, psychologically, and physically

    Read More

  • Racial Discrimination in The Help by Kathryn Stockett

    1125 Words  | 3 Pages

    Racial discrimination is a conviction within one’s self. No matter how long we fight against it, it will always remain present in our society. Too often people are quick to judge others based on physical appearances. Often, people base their judgments on the unknown; whether that is fear, curiosity or unfamiliarity. The quote in the novel, “A bill that requires every white home to have a separate bathroom for the coloured help. I’ve even notified the surgeon general of Mississippi to see if he’ll endorse the idea,” Hilly Holbrook, the novels “villain,” wants to legalize such discriminatory actions to separate blacks from whites. In another quote, she states that, “Everybody knows they carry different diseases than we do.” Holbrook re...

    Read More

  • The Three Women In The 1960's Jackson Mississippi

    164 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Help focuses on three women in the 1960s Jackson Mississippi: Aibileen, who works as a nanny and housekeeper for the Leefolt family. Minny, an outspoken maid; and Skeeter, a recent college graduate. Skeeter longs to pursue a career in writing that will take her beyond the stifling confines of her refined white southern society. Skeeter, dismayed by the racist “Home Help Sanitation Initiative” started by her childhood friend Hilly Holbrook, Skeeter begins to think about what it might mean to change attitudes about race and other such stereotypes in Jackson Mississippi. On the suggestion of Harper and Row editor, Elaine Stein, Skeeter begins with a dangerous new project: interviewing the black maids about what it is like to work as a black

    Read More

  • Character Analysis: The Help By Kathryn Stockett

    1151 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are moments in our lives when we find ourselves at a crossroad, afraid, confused, without a roadmap. The choices we make in those moments can define the rest of our days. Of course when faced with the unknown, most of us prefer to turn around and go back. One person can change many lives – for better or worse. In “The Help”, a novel by Kathryn Stockett, there is a young white woman, Skeeter, who lives in Jackson, Mississippi, and uses her talent of writing in order to open the eyes of the people around her and to give realization of separation between the whites and colored. Skeeter’s book discussed the ideas of equality, unity among all and impacts of other’s opinions that can ruin one’s innocence.

    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

  • The Black Woman's Burden in Three Novels: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Toni Mo

    1381 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many African and African American writers and film makers attempt to capture an aspect of this struggle in their works. Some address the struggle of love for black woman, as we see in the character of Janie in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Others will focus on the maternal struggle faced by black woman in America as Sethe in Toni Morrison's Beloved embodies. The more traditional but equally valid perspective deals with racial tensions and how racism challenges the inner strength of black woman as seen in the character of Sofia in Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Each angle of discussi...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Kathryn Stockett's Novel The Help

    1208 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help is the story of helps in the 1960s small town Jackson, Mississippi. Through a young white lady Skeeter and her cooperator helps Aibileen and Minny’s effort to make an original book that is written the daily life of helps and white families from helps’ point of view, Stokett tries to portray the manner of the 1960s Southern women. This essay discusses a white lady Hilly’s motivation to act terribly cruel towards the helps and people around her, in addition, it examines Hilly’s two-sided personality which is as a flawed separatist and as a wonderful mother as the answer of QUESTION 1. Besides, Skeeter’s mother Charlotte’s belief for her help Constantine or Lulabelle, Constantine’s daughter and Charlotte’s sympathy

    Read More

  • The Help Movie

    626 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Help was a movie about the struggles that black women had as maids working for white families in 1960s Mississippi. Their struggles recorded by a young southern white woman by the name of Skeeter. Gaining the aid of Aibileen Clark who, though reluctant at first, was the first to retell her experiences. The domino effect starting off with the arrest of Yule May Davis--a fellow maid. I was not disappointed in how this movie was executed. It focused well on what they needed to and even threw in a little more about the world around them during the time. The way people acted toward one another felt natural, especially between the two opposing forces.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Dark Girls

    1091 Words  | 3 Pages

    directed by D. Channsin Berry and Bill Duke, addresses these issues stemmed from colorism and the impact it has on women.

    Read More

More about Psychological Themes In The Movie 'The Help'

Open Document