Analysis: The Test By Angelica Gibbs

The Help by Kathryn Stockett gave everyone insight to the life of an African American woman in the early 1960s. The Help criticized racial inequality, and gives society an insider's view of segregation and fear of the status quo in their own race. Throughout the 1960s many African American woman worked in housekeeping. The novel follows the lives of three maids who are have a book wrote from their point of view. The story follows them as they go through the struggles of life and how stressful writing the book is on them because of time period and how dangerous it was to be seen with a person of the different race if you weren't working for them. Being seen with a person of the different race could get you labeled or worse thrown in jail for an integration violation.

My dissertation started off with the idea of how the characters in The Help expressed their voice and the complications they faced in doing that. The novel is about giving voice to African Americans maids in the 1960s in a society formed by its legacy of slavery and racism. However, The Help got a lot of criticism from both critics and readers as they questioned the success and motives of Kathryn Stockett's attempt to give voice to African Americans, especially in its authenticity. One of the problems found in the novel is that the black maids can only express their voice and stories through Skeeter, a white woman, who is using the stories (at least at the beginning of the novel) to boost her own career.1 The issue becomes more complicated

The movie, The Help, is based on the book written by Kathryn Stockett. It was released in 2011 and directed by Tate Taylor (Taylor, 2017). The Help is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960’s, and it is about the experiences black women had as maids for white families. These women decided to risk it all and tell their stories in an effort to show what is was really like for them (Taylor, 2011). The Help illustrates how these women fought racism and prejudice by becoming unified with one another. This paper will address how prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and inequality affect the characters and their relationships in the story.

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

Throughout the 1900’s racial prejudice behaviours were adopted during the colonisation of white Europeans in counties deemed undiscovered. The play ‘No Sugar’ written by Jack Davis, published in 1986, encompasses the impacts of racial discrimination inflicted on the Indigenous Australians during the attempted assimilation into Western Society. Similarly Tate Taylor explored issues of racism in America in the film, ‘The Help’, released in 2011. Set in the 1960’s, ‘The Help’ showcases the racial discrimination in Jackson, Mississippi, focusing on the coloured women left with little choice other than to work as a maid in the homes of white families. Both texts present the same ideas being, minority groups, such as Aboriginals and African-Americans, are severely discriminated against in society simply due to their race; and marginalized groups begin a resistance movement within society towards equal rights. The two different texts present the same ideas through conventions such as dialogue, characterisation and colloquial language to highlight the two ideas.

This made me perceive myself as if I were subordinate or not enough, later on I found out that was not it; but for a while that was my battle. Daniel Munczek Edelman in his short academic journal also writes about the fear his mother had of him being different and not being able to speak the language (English), “My immigrant mother freaked out when I couldn't speak English at the beginning of nursery school.” (Edelman 59.40). His mother knew how hard it would be for him not knowing the language, how the difference of his culture would and could affect him. This article was written in two-thousand thirteen, it is a recent article proving that the differences in cultures are still relevant. His anecdote is essential because he gives background to what goes on in the differences of culture and examples of how culture has perceptions and how it can shape oneself. “My boss, half African-American and half white herself, jokingly called me "half-caste," insisting that I would one day admit that I wasn't totally white.” (Edelman 59.40) This justifies my point that the way we look does have an influence on the way others view “us”. Daniel Munczek Edelman’s boss did joke about his ethnicity because of the way he looked, he didn’t totally look like his other ethnicities and didn’t really involve himself

To begin with is the content. The authors of both literary works are women who have tried to act as the mirror of the society as they are able to recognize the plights of African women in the hands of the white man. Women compared to men have suffered a lot of racism, prejudice and rejection and nobody seem to come to their rescue (O'Brien, 2001). For example, in Smith's "what it's like to be a black American" portrays a vivid picture of how the young girl seem to be struggling inwardly so as to be accepted wholly from her dressing code to her physical appearance; "First of all, it's being 9 years old and feeling like you're not finished."- A sign of dissatisfaction with the physical look. This is because she feels that she

Life in the 1960’s was not sweet like pie for the women who found themselves stuck in an endless loop of clearing someone else’s tables, raising someone else’s children, and living by someone else’s rules. These black maids lived in fear, knowing the white ladies they worked for could ruin everything for them by saying the wrong thing, or having the wrong attitude. The book, The Help, and the movie of the same name have quite a few differences that I noticed. It may only have a Lexile of 730, but that does not reflect the extreme measures this story goes to tell an amazing tale of bravery and strength that nothing else can rival. However, the author of The Help, Kathryn Stockett, and the director of the movie, Tate Taylor, knew what they were

If I were a participant if one of Jane Elliott’s exercises, I would have expressed a variety of emotions. I would have felt frustrated by the way she belittled us and with the rules that she enforced. She enforced rules so that the blue eyed people would fail and for the brown eyed people to succeed. I would have also felt humiliated by the way she mocked the blue eyed people. I would have felt angry with her too for treating and talking to me as iI would have benefitted from participating in a similar activity, because of the lessons that were taught in it. The most important lesson is to treat others fairly and to not be ignorant. She makes this very clear when she says that she won’t feel sympathetic towards the blue eyed people, because there are people in this world who face this kind of treatment on a day-to-day basis.

There have been many stories about discrimination. It has affected people of color. Those stories explained how bad it can be for outsiders. Stories like that have had a big impact on society. Two stories that are an example of that are “Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples and “The F Word” by Firoozeh Dumas. The stories, “Black Men and Public Space” and “The F Word” are similar because both characters were discriminated against themselves, were not the only ones harassed, and each went through a tough moment.

Through history, humanity had to deal with the same constant problem: racism. As a matter of fact, there is more than one type of racism. For example, there is racism by religion, by language, by country, by genre, and also by race. Apparently, society has a global idea of what is acceptable and what is politically correct. The story “Effigies” by Lucinda Roy, develop around Samuel Bernard Monroe, who always identify himself with, he believed, the right racial group, indeed he made a career out of “being black”. After all, the credibility of his identity is then in judgment after his nemesis Seraye Underwood, who was a “true black person” with strong skills and knowledgment about African-American studies, based her argument against him in the fact that he didn’t look “black”. The term of what counts is quality, not quantity, is globally known, as well as the achievements of a person do not have a color. As result, not having a specific cultural background nor physical characteristic should be part in the judgment of someone’s ability, moreover it shouldn't be a reason to hire or fire a person.

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

A Tate Taylor film, The Help (2009) emphasizes the extreme, racially-charged stereotypes thus endorses racial thinking. Blacks in this film are represented broadly as common house maids, or domestic slaves, but specifically as oppressed, unhappy, impoverished, and products of hardship through the utilization of racist stereotypes and juxtaposition with the lives of affluent whites in the southern United States, a juxtaposition which immortalizes the racial gap between whites and blacks.

Society has changed and evolved throughout time. Perhaps one of the most significant changed in contemporary American society is the treatment towards African Americans. “The Help” a feature film directed by Tate Taylor is based on the non-fictional novel “The Help” written by author Kathryn Sockett. The feature film explores the life of African American maids of Jackson Mississippi, in the early 1960’s. The 1960’s displayed all African Americans to being left out of the “American dream” through neglect and racism. African Americans faced prejudice and discrimination in almost every aspect of their life, from jobs to housing and even their education. They were denied the right to sit at the same lunch counter or use the same public rest

Part 1 - In American author's 2009 book, The Help, the primary thesis is the relationship between Black maids and white households in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s. The story is really told from three perspectives, Aibileen and Minny are Black women, both maids, and Skeeter is the nickname of Eugenia Phelan, daughter of a prominent White family. Skeeter has just finished school and hopes to become a writer. In general, the relationship between the Black maids and the White employers is six sided: On one side we have the White employers who have three views: 1) Their personal and private beliefs that can range from extreme scorn and bias to kindness regarding race; 2) Their public persona that must have the "proper" attitude about Blacks and "the help," and 3) Their employer attitude, which is condescending and parental. The Black view also has three segments: 1) Their personal and private beliefs that usually range from understanding not all Whites are the same and an extreme love and empathy for the White children for whom they care; 2) The public persona that is deferential, polite, and stoic to their White bosses; and 3) Their attitude and view among the Black community, which usually separates the "poor and ignorant but rich" White souls from the Black view of family and common sense. All in all, the relationship is contentious, phony, and based on economic advantage.