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Racism in literature
Racism theme in literature
Analysis of The Help novel
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Some people think that the sky is always blue, but it is not. Martin Luther King says “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”. “The Help” written by Katheryn Stockett, delivers a discernible story that shows the contrasting of lifestyles which impact children, maids and the protagonist. The story revolves around three main characters; Aibileen Clark, Minny Jackson and Skeeter Phelan, and their lives on different sides of the racial barrier. “The Help” through character, setting and conflict reveals that in a place where there is racial tension and abusive power, it is difficult to find hope. In “The Help” the two most important characters are Aibileen and Skeeter. However, the setting in this novel is more crucial, as it impacts the character in many different ways. The setting then creates many conflicts for the characters. Aibileen and Skeeter are the most crucial characters in “The Help” because they show both sides of racial tension that exists in the novel. Aibileen is the black maid who works for Mrs Elizabeth Leefolt (one of skeeters friends), and her character is displayed as emotional and vulnerable unlike any other maid. However, there is something phenomenal about her. In the the novel there is a conversation between Aibileen and Skeeter. Skeeter says “Did you ever dream of being something else?” Aibileen nods “yes”(pg-169). This shows that there is something much more beyond to Aibileens character rather than just being an emotional vulnerable maid. Aibileen represents light in a dark place (servitude). In the beginning of the novel this phenomenal character describes the death of her son. Aibileen was a mother, and like most mothers she loved her son very much. The fact he... ... middle of paper ... ... is very important to Jackson. However, she uses her power abusively and is the most racist in the novel. She dies what ever she can to stop Aibileen and Skeeter from finding hope through their stories. The author Katheryn Stockett reveals that for a person to find hope, he/she must overcome the conflicts they have towards with characters and their environment. Aibileen and Skeeter live in different social situations yet they experience similar conflicts. Discrimination on any level is not acceptable. Katheryn Stockett revealed an environment that is unfair to different races. When we talk about equality in humanity, there is no dominant side but both sides are equal. “The Help” is written according in the time of 1962, when there was brutal social and political environment for black people. How can people in such an environment be protected from injustice.
Racism as we all know it is very disturbing, annoying, and is not tolerable. This story is based on life on a foundation of segregation and dangers of racism. This one novel is placed in a small, under-populated city of Vermont, where a family of three, the Sutters, another family of 3, the Hirsch's with a caring person, named Sara Chickering, and some people face many problems and solutions in their lives.
All through the times of the intense expectation, overwhelming sadness, and inspiring hope in this novel comes a feeling of relief in knowing that this family will make it through the wearisome times with triumph in their faces. The relationships that the mother shares with her children and parents are what save her from despair and ruin, and these relationships are the key to any and all families emerging from the depths of darkness into the fresh air of hope and happiness.
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.
Janie who continually finds her being defined by other people rather than by herself never feels loved, either by her parents or by anybody else. Her mother abandoned her shortly after giving birth to her. All she had was her grandmother, Nanny, who protected and looked after her when she was a child. But that was it. She was even unaware that she is black until, at age six, she saw a photograph of herself. Her Nanny who was enslaved most of her lifetime only told her that a woman can only be happy when she marries someone who can provide wealth, property, and security to his wife. Nanny knew nothing about love since she never experienced it. She regarded that matter as unnecessary for her as well as for Janie. And for that reason, when Janie was about to enter her womanhood in searching for that love, Nanny forced her to marry Mr. Logan Killicks, a much older man that can offer Janie the protection and security, plus a sixty-acre potato farm. Although Janie in her heart never approves what her Nanny forced her to do, she did it anyway. She convinced herself that by the time she became Mrs. Killick, she would get that love, which turned out to be wrong.
Recovering from an identity crisis that lasted most of her childhood, Janie realizes who she wants to be with the help of a pear tree, but her grandmother disapproves of her dissimilar feelings and forces her to cast away her horizon. With no parents there to raise her, Janie loses her sense of identity. She spends her childhood under the care of her grandma and the white people Nanny works for, and as a result, she spends all of her time playing with the Washburn’s four children. Janie does not realize that she is different from them until she turns six. When she sees a photograph of herself for the first time, she refuses to recognize her darker skin color. To compensate for her lack of self, she goes by the nickname “Alphabet” because she has so many different names. Both her connection to the Washburn family and her biracial ethnicity isolate her from the black and white communities. African-American children mock her for her nice clothes; vulnerable and frail, Jani...
The 1960s was the time when women and men were treated with cruelty, were paid barely enough money to spend on food, and were beaten senseless just because of their race. Though it sounds like an excruciating life to live, many of these African Americans lived life to the fullest despite what others thought of them. In Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, African Americans are treated hastily by whites, as analyzed by the book’s historical significance, personal analysis, and literary criticisms to fully comprehend life in the 1960s of the south.
Margaret Atwood’s “Happy Endings” is an Author’s telling of societal beliefs that encompass the stereotypical gender roles and the pursuit of love in the middle class with dreams of romance and marriage. Atwood writes about the predictable ways in which many life stories are concluded for the middle class; talking about the typical everyday existence of the average, ordinary person and how they live their lives. Atwood provides the framework for several possibilities regarding her characters’ lives and how each character eventually completes their life with their respective “happy ending”.
Margaret Atwood’s novel, Alias Grace, nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel, depicts a young 16 year old girl who is found guilty of murdering her employer and his lover in conspiracy with James McDerrmott. James McDermott is put to death by hanging, but Grace is brought to prison because she is of the “weaker sex.” This is a reflection of the construction of femininity and masculinity of the mid and late nineteenth century. A social issue of the Victorian age was women being treated as subordinate to men. Queen Victoria says, “Victorian ideology of gender rested on the belief that women were both physically and intellectually the inferior sex”(YILDIRIM). Women were seen as highly susceptible to becoming mentally ill because of this belief. Women were subject to only be “housewives.” The novel, Alias Grace, accurately shows the construction of this gender identity through society, sexuality, and emotion while challenging it through Grace’s mother and Mrs. Humphrey.
Survival should have been the priority of the chaotic world that Lauren lives in; however, gender, race, and class persist. In this book Butler shows that, although gender, race, and class insist, people in every class, race, or gender have to leave the tradition behind and not only prioritize their safety but to begin moving the world back toward equality. This story is told based on Lauren, the narrator’s point of view from her diary where she explains how society has broken in every aspect and how she tries to survive. In the story, Lauren, the hyper-empathy narrator, is an African-American preacher’s daughter, who has her own beliefs and philosophy about God and life.
Today, blacks are respected very differently in society than they used to be. In “The Help”, we see a shift in focus between what life is like now for the average African American compared to what it was like for them to live in the 1960’s.“The Help” teaches readers the importance of understanding and learning from our history. The novel is a snapshot of the cultural, racial and economic distinctions between blacks and whites in a particularly tumultuous time in American history. “The Help” encourages readers to examine personal prejudices and to strive to foster global equality.
Curtis GreenTiffany ConleyENGL213027 April 2016 The Help is a book written by an American novelist, Kathryn Stockett. The story takes place in a time in Jackson, Mississippi where racism was still highly existent just as it is today. During this time, we learn of the black maids who are taking care of any needs that should be met by the white families whom they look after. Throughout the novel, we see many deals of racism as well as the way that it impacts both sides. While racism is still an issue in today 's general public, it could be incredibly decreased if we had more individuals like Miss Skeeter who showed the powerful usage of differing qualities while displaying understanding.“These women collaborate on a book detailing the “real”
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.
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.
Throughout her life as a maid she has raised seventeen white children. Aibileen tries to teach the children that she raises that the color of a person’s skin does not matter. Unfortunately, this message is often contradicted by the racism in Jackson. During the movie she works for Elizabeth Leefolt and takes care of her toddler Mae Mobley Leefolt. The death of Aibileen’s son inspires her to help Skeeter write her book about the lives of colored maids in Mississippi. Aibileen experiences many forms of social inequality throughout the movie. For instance, throughout her life, Aibileen is forced to take care other people’s children while her son is at home taking care of himself. Additionally, at the end of the movie due to her involvement in helping Skeeter write her book, Hilly falsely accuses Aibileen of stealing silverware and convinces Elizabeth to fire her. She was fired for trying to show the social inequality between colored people and white
Mrs. Marian Forrester strikes readers as an appealing character with the way she shifts as a person from the start of the novel, A Lost Lady, to the end of it. She signifies just more than a women that is married to an old man who has worked in the train business. She innovated a new type of women that has transitioned from the old world to new world. She is sought out to be a caring, vibrant, graceful, and kind young lady but then shifts into a gold-digging, adulterous, deceitful lady from the way she is interpreted throughout the book through the eyes of Niel Herbert. The way that the reader is able to construe the Willa Cather on how Mr. and Mrs. Forrester fell in love is a concept that leads the reader to believe that it is merely psychological based. As Mrs. Forrester goes through her experiences such as the death of her husband, the affairs that she took part in with Frank Ellinger, and so on, the reader witnesses a shift in her mentally and internally. Mrs. Forrester becomes a much more complicated women to the extent in which she struggles to find who really is and that is a women that wants to find love and be fructuous in wealth. A women of a multitude of blemishes, as a leading character it can be argued that Mrs. Forrester signifies a lady that is ultimately lost in her path of personal transitioning. She becomes lost because she cannot withstand herself unless she is treated well by a wealthy male in which causes her to act unalike the person she truly is.