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Character Analysis: The Help

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The Love We Hide It is Carl Rogers, a psychologist, who came up with the theory that all people were born good, but they were spoiled by the bad people of the world. We all are born with simple traits like love and compassion, but it’s our bring-up that determines who we will become. In The Help, we see two maids and one white woman convey their love and compassion, not just to better their own lives but to improve the lives of others like their bosses and the children they take care of. Notably, one of our first maids Aibileen demonstrates her loving care and compassion she holds for others and not just those of her own skin color. It’s amazing how Aibileen is able to show love and attention to the babies she takes care of, but …show more content…

Skeeter, the only white character in the book that we get to witness from their point of view. It is clear from the start that Ms. Skeeter cares more about what’s going on in Jackson, Mississippi than her other friends. The best proof we have of Ms. Skeeter showing her love and compassion is when she plans on writing her book about domesticated help and their stories. This may only seem like a book, but it is a vehicle that she uses to display her love for all the maids in the city and how she needs things to change. That is proven through a quote from the book, “Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else” (Stockett 83). This quote wasn’t said by Skeeter herself, but it was advice from Mrs. Stein to write about what bothers her. This quote proves that she cares about the maids, because she is bothered by how they are treated. It is through her compassion for the colored maids and her father’s colored field hands that she feels the need to sit down and write the book. Not only, does the book display Skeeter’s love and compassion, but it brings out Aibileen’s and Minny’s. This book is more than just a statement to all of the white women in town with colored maids, it is like a string that pulls these three women together and it is with this book that they are able to see the love and compassion that each has for the

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843 Words | 4 Pages

Skeeter becomes alienated due to her choices of not being married, and because of how her perspective on the division between white Southern households and black maids has changed due to being in the city and going to college. She also crosses social boundaries in the movie to write a book about the lives of black maids in the South, which is a highly controversial and could have gotten the maids who helped fired and shunned. These characteristics are what help her further her transformation from the women she was raised to be to the independent, brave woman who chooses her own

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307 Words | 2 Pages

The character of Aibileen is often depicted as a symbol of courage and perseverance; throughout the story, she is often shown endangering her life in many different ways trying to contribute to Skeeter’s book. While she was overcoming the grief of her sole son’s unlawful death, Aibileen soon begins to realize that she wanted to make a change in the way Caucasians saw African Americans and ultimately achieve her son’s goal. Although the persona of Aibileen initially feared to help write Skeeter’s book, she later ends up agreeing. During the time she felt intimidated, she mentions the severity of punishments for crimes where African Americans express their political/social opinions and/or do something considered ethically wrong by

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995 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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604 Words | 3 Pages

The Help: Book vs. Movie In 2009, Kathryn Stockett wrote a book called “The Help” that was turned into a movie in by director Tate Taylor. The Help is about a young Caucasian woman named Miss Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan who has a friendship with African-American maids Abilene Clark and Minnie Jackson, during the Civil Rights Era of the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi. Miss Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is an aspiring writer who decides to write a book on what it is like to be an African-American maid working in a racist environment with Caucasian families. However, the book is different from the movie due to the characters storyline.

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488 Words | 2 Pages

Daughter of a sharecropper, Anne Moody soon at a young age came to the realization that her skin color made her part of the inferior race, inferior to the white race and subject to the control and merciless power of the white society and government. As a child after her father abandoned her mother, Moody live in continuous poverty. Poverty caused her mother sincere depression and planted a seed of bitterness in little five year old Moody. ”Mama cried all night.” Stated Anne Moody.

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Skeeter views Aibileen as a person that struggles in life with the fact that she isn’t white. To everyone Aibileen is perceived as a minority or lower class so throughout the film Aibileen treated with disrespect and taken advantage off. Luckily for her Skeeter helps her out and is practically her voice by taking out and showing Aibileen’s truth and perception of the world in which she lives in. Skeeter did this story for both her and Aibileen, she wanted a job in New York as a writer and saw how bady Aibileen needed her help. Overall Skeeter continued to ask Aibileen to help her write the book until she agreed afterwards Skeeter thought that Aibileen was a hero for sticking up and knowing what some possible outcomes would be like threats

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1746 Words | 7 Pages

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

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569 Words | 3 Pages

The movie The Help and the book To Kill a Mockingbird both take place in the south during the mid 1900s, a time of great racial discrimination and cultural hatred. The main characters in both stories, Skeeter and Atticus Finch, each have a cause that they are actively working towards throughout the movie and book respectively, within their small southern town. Both of their goals are to help African Americans escape and overcome the racial prejudice they undergo on a daily basis. Skeeter’s methods are more effective to helping her cause because she actually succeeds in her plan to expose the racial inequities of her town, although, Atticus tries his best and means well, he doesn’t actually win his case defending Tom Robinson, so therefore Skeeter’s methods are more direct and adequate for supporting her purpose. Skeeter’s initial goal, or cause, was to publish a book that exposed the injustices undergone by the house maids, or ‘help’ in her small southern town.

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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

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1574 Words | 7 Pages

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.

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1856 Words | 8 Pages

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

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696 Words | 3 Pages

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."

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249 Words | 1 Pages

At the end of the 18th century, Shelley, her family, and the rest of Europe watched as French peasants, tired of social inequality, broke into the royal prison, the Bastille, in a sign of defiance against King Louis XVI. Shortly afterwards, this rebellion turned into a revolution, King Louis XVI and his wife were imprisoned and later executed, and the French monarchy collapsed (Marcuse). Because of the French Revolution, which ushered in the First French Republic, French laws and philosophy began to align with enlightenment ideals, which emphasizes equality. On the 26th of August, 1789, the French National Assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which most notably states, “Men are born and remain free and equal in

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1395 Words | 6 Pages

This blurring can be seen in the love between Skeeter and her maid Constantine, where Skeeter feels more at home with Constantine then with her own family and friends. For instance, she says to her mother that Constantine raised her5 and that she was hurt that Constantine left her with “these

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3436 Words | 14 Pages

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

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