In the book The Help, Stockett uses pathos to show people’s emotions and their different feelings throughout the book. Skeeter’s interviews cause meekness and fear in the maids because if they get caught, their punishment will end up much worse because of the color of their skin. As shown in the book fear shows pathos as well as anger, sadness, and love. In the book, the maids give interviews for Skeeter because Skeeter believes that she can put together these stories from the maids and help change some of the segregation laws. Gretchen, a maid who shows ruthlessness towards Skeeter, also chooses to show confrontation when she confronts and berates Skeeter and Aibileen.
In the Help, Skeeter has to sacrifice her relationship with all of her friends in order to stand up for what she actually believed in. She wanted to make a major change in the way things worked in Jackson because she kept a relationship with her maid, Constantine. Sacrifice is key with all of the maids and Skeeter because it is the obstacle of actually writing the book. Every writer has to make sacrifices when writing a novel. Skeeter is a great representation as she loses her friendships, her relationship with Stuart Whitworth, and spending time with her sick mother in order to make a bigger change.
Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, attests to the hateful and cruel reality that is the life of African Americans in Jackson, Mississippi circa the 1960’s. Stockett writes many anecdotes surrounding the relationship between Constantine, an African American maid, and the child she cares for, Skeeter. Skeeter reflects upon a memory of Constantine and
In the novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, there are many characters that can be identified as an antagonist throughout the story. However, Hilly Holbrook is the most significant of them all. With her attitude towards colored people, her controlling personality, and the methods she uses in order to have her way, it is obvious that Ms. Hilly is a definite villain of this novel. In the novel, many white families, including Ms. Hilly’s, had hired African American maids to help them around the house.
Skeeter also wishes to expose the injustice that the African Americans faced in the South. Many of the Southerns, including her friends, oppose this dream, and this conflict leads Skeeter to be hated by many white Southerners. Eventually, even her suitor and her friends leave
By an anonymous writer later revealed as Skeeter also known as Eugenia Phelan. Skeeter, a white woman, returns to her hometown (Mississippi) to discover that her motherly nanny Constantine has left but no one tells what happened. Soon Skeeter realizes the injustice her society practices and decides to write a book where voices of black will be raised. She approaches Aibileen for sharing her narrative to which Aibileen responds positively and also let’s Minny in their secret. Minny, Aibileen’s friend, another black help, reveals a secret about Miss Hilly that ensures Miss Hilly’s silence after the publication of their writing project.
The Help focuses on the story of a upper class writer that tries to find her social identity as well as others. With help from the maids of Jackson, Mississippi, they all overcome stereotypes and discrimination. Aibileen's story was the foundation idea for Skeeter because she had been through so much in her life that she decided to tell her story. The fact that she was black, and a woman the role of a maid for the upper class families were passed down from generations so she saw her fair share of being looked down upon. Being a part of the Black/African African race, there were certain things
Skeeter is seen to develop in two different ways: a young woman who doesn 't have marriage as a first priority anymore and a woman who later sees an injustice to the black help. Skeeter is a white socialite who just graduated from college with a degree in writing. She came back to Jackson Mississippi with the idea of starting to write for book publishing companies but arrives home only for her mother to question her about marriage. Upon the many
Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, is not just about overcoming racism, but also about overcoming the constant human power struggle. The novel also showed how people treated each others, regardless if they were the same race. Throughout the book, Skeeter is ignored and cut-off by her friends while Minny is abused by her own husband. These two events happened even though each was the same race. Even the woman Minny worked for was being ignored because of who she married.
Throughout the novel The Help, written by Kathryn Stockett, the divide between human beings, whether it be in wealth or in the color of their skin, is prominent and acts as an example of human nature. However, oftentimes a person will enter another group even if they don't necessarily belong due to societal standards. Miss Celia, a rich woman new to Jackson is met with this challenge when she starts living in her new home. Being described as a castle with gray bricks rising high in the sky, Miss Celia’s home acts as a reminder to show that she was not meant for the style of life she greatly desires. However, Minny, a maid who has just begun working for Miss Celia, soon realizes the home does not match Miss Celia’s character, unlike the other families she's worked for.
Although the black maids endure such indignity, none will share their experiences with Skeeter in fear of being discovered by the town’s whites. Aibileen is among those who refuse, but one day at church the preacher exhorts the congregation to have courage and speak the truth. He states that, "Courage isn't just about being brave. Courage is daring to do what is right in spite of the weakness of our flesh. And God tells us, commands us, compels us, to love."
The profound novel, The Help, can be interpreted as having many themes and subliminal messages about life, but to truly understand the meaning of them, the conflicting points must be recognized. Due to the fact that the setting of the novel is during segregation, the friction between blacks and whites is what creates the novel. Although it is easily recognizable that one of the main conflicts is segregation, there is a major conflict between two prominent characters, Hilly and Skeeter, wealthy white women. Some of the issues within this novel lye in location and the social aspects of living in a small southern town in that time. There are several underlying conflicts in The Help, but the main one that sets up all the themes are the conflicts
By using different topics and putting her characters in uncomfortable situations and making them address the problems in their lives and confronting the risk of writing a book about the treatment of the help and also by using realistic situations and realistic personalities, Stockett chooses a interesting choice of have three different perspectives. Kathryn makes all of her characters choices have a cause and effect on other characters everyone in the book she is affect one way or another by the release of Skeeter book at the end of the
A young college graduate, Skeeter, returns home to be with her ailing mother, and in her ambition to succeed as a writer, turns to the black maids she knows. Skeeter is determined to collect their oral histories and write about a culture that values social facade and ignores the human dignity of many members of the community. Two maids, Aibileen and Minny, agree to share their stories, stories of struggle and daily humiliation, of hard work and low pay, of fear for themselves. It is a time of change, when
The Help is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960s. Skeeter, a southern society girl, interviews the black women who have spent their lives being servants for wealthy white Southern families. There are various scenes throughout the film that show social stratification, racial inequalities, gender inequalities, and class inequalities. Massey’s Social Stratification Theory states that humans allocate people to different categories. These categories often lead to inequality which is implemented socially.
