The book “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett,follows the story of three women in Jackson Mississippi, seeking to make a difference in their communities. Aibileen is a maid who cooks,cleans,and raises white children though her own biological son died. She works for Miss Leefolt, who neglects her own daughter Mae Mobley, leaving even the most simple tasks to Aibileen,including loving Mae Mobley. Aibileen’s best friend Minny is another maid, but unlike Aibileen she is defiant and very outspoken, she worked for Miss Walters but her attitude and foul mouth landed her in hot water, resulting in her losing that job. Miss Skeeter is a young, ambitious, aspiring writer who notices the ill treatment and dehumanization of the help. Using her writing talents Miss Skeeter, decides to shed light on the horrible situation.This brings the three women together in an unlikely situation that changes everyone’s view of the help and all the women …show more content…
The author did not spare the reader on how harsh the racial tensions were back then. So, I could really feel what the men and women of that time period went through. A character that represents this historic aspect in the book is Miss Hilly. She uses the fact that she is a white woman who has authority over the help, to terrorize them and make their lives miserable. Hilly continuously dehumanizes the help, for instance in the text Miss Hilly says, “‘a disease-preventative measure...I don’t think you ought to be joking about the colored situation’” (Stockett 20). Miss Hilly disregards the fact that the help and all other black people are actually human. She speaks of them as if they are a different species and that they are below her. This was the mentality of many people during this time period, and I like the fact that the author showcased this in the book in such an upfront way, because it is a very important part to the
The book , The Help by Kathryn Stockett, is about a women named Aibileen who is a black maid. She is taking care of her 17th white baby now. She works for a woman named Miss Leefolt. Aibileen has never disobeyed an order in her life and never intends to do so. Her friend Minny is the exact opposite. When she is around her boss, she has to hold herself back from sassing them all the time. Skeeter Phelan is different than the rest of the white ladies. She thinks that blacks aren’t all that bad. She decides to write a book about the lives of maids for white ladies. Otherwise known as the Help. She with the help of Aibileen and Minny hope to create a book that starts a revolution about what white people think about blacks.
In the book, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, the main theme throughout the book is racial prejudice. The book is about a privileged 22 year old girl whose name was Skeeter. She dream was to become a writer so she began to write stories of black maids working in white family homes. All her life she has been told what to believe in and what to think about certain things, but while writing these stories she realized she was able to think for herself. Skeeter was different from the other white girls. She kind of became an outcast among her friends and her community because of the rules she was breaking. Skeeter only wanted to become a writer, but she hoped that the book she wrote would make people understand that there is not much of a
The Help by Kathryn Stockett, is a book set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, told by three different women: Abilene, Minny and Skeeter, in each of their perspectives. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is a graduate student whose dream is to become a writer, but when she tries for a position at the local newspaper, she is given the job of writing housekeeping tips.
Kathryn's novel, The Help (a sprawling novel narrated by three women living in Civil Rights-era) is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. There is much significance in this choice of time and place. Despite all the events connecting to the Civil Rights Movement are flashed back to during the novel, the main action of the novel takes place in the houses of the white people who have hired black servants to take care of the family. A time that saw the segregation of black people and the dominance of white people in the southern United States. In this novel, the setting of 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi exposes significant themes such as racial discrimination, social partiality. The setting
The main theme of the book “The Help” is that racism against the whites and blacks were a big issue back in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960’s, black people were denied the right to an education and such, and were either made up as housekeepers and slaves to the white people. In the book, the white people would call the blacks vulgar names such as, dirty, worthless and other words that should not be mentioned. As you can tell, the whites showed how more privileged they were rather than the blacks. Now, as for the characters in the book, basically, all of the people were racists, most couldn’t even realize it, the only white person who was not racist was Skeeter, she gave the black maids particularly,
So bounded by their current circumstances, some people don’t know their true potential. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, is about what it’s like to work as a maid in the South during the 1960s. Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson are maids and nannies for two separate families in Jackson, Mississippi. A woman, known as Miss Skeeter, has the idea to write an anonymous book called Help about what it’s like to live as a maid in Jackson. The book becomes a success but has both positive and negative consequences towards the end of the story. Aibileen Clark changes from unhappy, to anxious, and finally, insightful. A reader can conclude that it takes being forced out of their comfort zone to realize their potential.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett tells the story of Skeeter a writer, Minny a colored maid who can’t keep a job, and Abilene a maid who has been taking care of children and their families since she was a teen. The year is 1962 and theses women decided to write a book that unintentionally fought segregation.
Vy Le Mr. Williams Sociology 1101 22 July 2017 Sociological Concept in “The Help” Summary: The Help is written by Tate Taylor in 2011 which is adapted from Kathryn Stockett's novel. This film mainly talked about three women in Mississippi during 1960s : Aibileen Clark who is a black maid and works for Elizabeth family, Minny Jackson who is the brusque and outspoken maid, and Skeeter Phelan who decides to write the book about "the help”.
Set in the South in the 1960’s, The Help by Kathryn Stockett describes the story of three women. Aibileen; an African American maid who is raising her 17th white child with a bitter seed planted in her heart, Minnie, a mouthy maid who can’t seem to hold a job and finally lands one with the most unconventional white lady in the South, and Skeeter, a white and unmarried lady who is desperate to write something meaningful. All it takes is Skeeter’s determination, Aibileen's resilience, and Minnie’s sassy mouth for something wonderfully moving, funny, and thrilling to emerge.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett is ultimately about the racism in Jackson,Mississippi and how it invaded every aspect of social life. The story highlights the life of a girl named Skeeter she has just graduated from Ole Miss and has an interest in writing as she edits the news letters for The Junior League,but she really wants to be an author. She comes up with the idea of telling the true stories of the domestic victims this soon becomes a reality once the publisher approves of her idea she soon finds out the horrific stories about everyone around her. People may say this story only highlights the domestic victims life this may be somewhat true the book is in Skeeter’s point of view. This story's theme is about racism,segregation,and overcoming obstacles in society.
The Help, Kathryn Stockett's presentation novel, recounts the narrative of dark servants working in white Southern homes in the mid 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, and of Miss Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a 22-year-old graduate from Ole Miss, who comes back to her family's cotton manor, Longleaf, to observe that her adored cleaning specialist and babysitter, Constantine, has left and nobody will advise her why. Skeeter tries to carry on as a legitimate Southern woman: She plays span with the youthful wedded ladies; alters the bulletin for the Lesser Alliance; and perseveres through her mom's steady guidance on the most proficient method to discover a man and begin a family. Be that as it may, Skeeter's genuine dream is to be an essayist, yet the main employment she can discover is with the Jackson Diary composing a housekeeping counsel section called "Miss Myrna." Skeeter knows minimal about housekeeping, so she swings to her companion's cleaning specialist, Aibileen, for answers and finds significantly more.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett is one of the most marvelous novels capturing the zeitgeist of the 1960’s written in recent times: being published February 10, 2009. This novel not only described the situation between African-American maids and their employers, but encapsulated the thoughts and sentiments of the people that characterized the decade of the 60’s. These thoughts were depicted well because the author, Kathryn Stockett, grew up in Jackson, Mississippi; the very town that The Help is set in. She is comparable to the character of Skeeter, because Stockett was a young writer living in the South with aspirations of becoming an eminent journalist. They also witnessed firsthand the oppression and
The storyline of The Help starts when young Eugenia Phelan, known to her friends as “Skeeter”, returns to her home in Jackson, Mississippi, after graduating college. The time period is during the 1960s and there is high tension because of racism and the Civil Rights Movement. Skeeter is surprised when she does not find her beloved maid, Constantine, at home. What happened to Constantine is a mystery to Skeeter and no one seems to answer her hovering questions.
During the Civil Right Movement in the early 1960’s, Jackson, Mississippi was going through terrible troubles in an era defined by segregation. Society was strictly isolated along racial, social, political, and economic rights for blacks. In the book, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, the author demonstrates the evolvement of the two contrasting women, Skeeter and Aibileen. Within the first chapters, the author illustrates the true burdens and daily struggles of being a black woman living in a white man’s world. However, these two characters are incompatible. As one is a white woman that has never struggled in her life, while the other is a black woman that has worked all her life trying to overcome the burden of being an African American.
Have you ever been judged for something that you can’t control? The novel, The Help by Katheryn Stockett, is based in the early 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. Throughout the book you will meet various maids that are willing to risk their lives to help a white lady write a book about how maids in the South were treated during the 60’s. As a woman, growing up in Southern Mississippi during the 60’s can be very challenging.