The three main characters in “The Help” are Skeeter Phelan, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson. The book focuses chiefly on Aibileen. She is a very round and believable character. She is a fifty-three year old, black maid working for a middleclass white family, the Leefolts.
Discussion 5 The book, “The Help” written by Katheryn Stockett, had many literary devices like metaphors and similes. My favorite literary device used in this book thus far are the elements of foreshadowing within sentences scattered throughout each chapter. The author’s effort to foreshadow throughout each chapter allowed the reader to predict the possible outcomes of the story.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett Segregated bathrooms, lunch counters, and schools. Being treated like nothing more than dirt. For many African Americans living in the South this was part of their everyday life. The Help, written by Kathryn Stockett, is the story about the problems with racial prejudice and the mistreatment of the African Americans, many of which worked underneath whites. The bitter seed growing inside of Aibileen is a symbol of how she feels about her mistreatment of blacks.
The movie, The Help by Tate Taylor, is about the treatment of African American maids during the 1960s and the main character, Skeeter Phelan trying to help them by publishing a novel about how the maids were treated like and how it affected their life. Both of these stories take place in the
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
The Help (2012), as directed by Tate Taylor, is a story of African American servants in 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi and their feelings towards the people they worked for. The film is narrated by the convincing housemaid Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) and follows the story of a hometown writer Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan (Emma Stone) and the roles they both play in a publishing a truth-be-told testimony about the treatment of African-Americans in Jackson. Aibileen Clark does a good job showing both sides of the civil rights debate, however, she lacks a certain amount of detail when it comes to the whites views, especially the white husbands. The story is naturally biased towards the housemaids but this does not necessarily take away from the plot of the story. Throughout the film, the maids are portrayed as the underdogs and this plays into the final conclusions very well.
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
She battles to free herself from the power that white Americans hold over her and her community during this time. With the help of a few fellow maids and Miss Skeeter, the white women who sparked the question of change, Aibileen hopes to change people’s opinions about how they perceive blacks
Aibileen stated that Hilly would likely spend her entire life trying to convince others that she had not eaten the pie, and that she was “in her own jail, but with a lifelong term” (Stockett 522). The great Hilly Holbrook, who had once had the town of Jackson, Mississippi wrapped around her little finger, had crumbled. Throughout Kathryn Stockett’s acclaimed novel, The Help, there existed a distinct power struggle between Hilly and Skeeter, two close friends who had been driven apart by their own opposing viewpoints concerning the black community of Jackson, Mississppi. Hilly was so admired by her peers that they were willing to fully believe most anything she said, giving her the power to besmirch the name of any and all who challenged her; this ability also allowed Hilly to spread her wildly racist beliefs among her devoted followers. Skeeter, however, chose to deviate from the norm, and fought back alongside Aibileen and Minny, the maids who had become her friends.
Black women are treated less than because of their ascribed traits, their gender and race, and are often dehumanized and belittled throughout the movie. They are treated like slaves and are seen as easily disposable. There are several moments throughout the film that show the racial, gender, and class inequalities. These moments also show exploitation and opportunity hoarding. The Help also explains historical context of the inequality that occurred during that time period.
Identify and describe the setting of your novel: The Help is set in Jackson, Mississippi from August, 1962 to late 1964. At this time African Americans were not treated equally as whites or given the same opportunities. Identify and describe the main characters: Minny and Aibileen are the main women representing ‘the help’- the black women who make life more comfortable for their white female employers.
The social groups focused on in this novel are white housewives, whose group consists of Skeeter, the privileged daughter of a farmer, who just returned from college, and “the help” or a group of maids who are of course of African American decent. The help is forced to obey their irrationally needy bosses, cooking for them, cleaning for them, and even raising their children, only to be treated inhumanely and unfairly by petty housewives. For example, one of the housewives, Hilly Holbrook, a seemingly conflicting character alone, was very suggestive of a bathroom act being enforced, which made it mandatory that every home have a separate bathroom for its help as a “safety precaution” because they could transmit diseases through their bodily functions. In situations like these, African Americans were very alienated, and it really displayed the gap in reality for the two groups. This in turn caused conflict between them, as African Americans were looked down at by whites and the whites were seen as threatening and wicked minded by African Americans.
The poem “For the Sleepwalkers” relays the idea that one must open up heart and body and follow one’s heart in order to attain the full experience of life. It emphasizes the tense nature people hold in their daily lives, and also highlights the idea that one must have a trusting heart and nature in order to truly experience life. The experience the poem dramatizes is sleepwalking, showing it to be a state of absolute vulnerability, where one’s heart and mind are completely unguarded. Edward Hirsch proves this idea of a need to open heart and trust like a sleepwalker to be the central theme of the poem.
Although a futile act it may seem, as she in the end cannot stop the cancerous ulcers she has from taking her life, her stubbornness about her death, allows her daughter, Skeeter, to have the courage to accept the job she was offered in New York City, along with a push from Aibileen and Minny. This is the second least important element, as although there are more things that have been kept or altered between the two forms, it wraps up Skeeter’s part in the book, putting it on the bottom of the list. The second least important element in this book to be kept or change is How Minny left Leroy. In both forms of “The Help”, Minny Jackson ends up leaving her husband, Leroy, with her kids, but why and how she leaves him changes with the media. In the book Minny tells the readers that while she is pregnant Leroy does not beat her
The movie clearly exposes the many ways that the human dignity of African- American maids was ignored. They had suffered daily embarrassment but were able to claim their own way dignity. The film described about empowerment of individuals as well as about social justice for a group. It is a moving story depicting dehumanization in a racist culture but also the ability to move beyond the unjust structures of society and to declare the value of every human being.
