Set in the 1960s, Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, is a story of black maids working in white Southern homes in Jackson, Mississippi. Portrayed through multiple character perspectives, Stockett’s writing largely focuses on a maid named Aibileen. Aibileen is a compassionate, strong-willed, and wise character. She teaches the white children she rears important values and throughout the novel Aibileen grows in the face of racial adversity. Aibileen is a protagonist. The speaker of eleven chapters, she commands the storyline and defines the tone and plot of the book. As Aibileen continues on her journey of rearing white children, she deems it important to teach the children, at a young age, that character is more powerful than skin color. …show more content…
The child portrayed in the book, Mae Mobley, is young and innocent. She does not comprehend the racial barriers present in the south and in her own home. In an attempt to develop Mae into an individual compassionate towards others, Aibileen focuses on providing Mae with a structured and influential childhood. While she rears Mae Mobley, Aibileen preaches characteristics of benevolence, self-love, and fairness to Mae in hopes that she will not develop the derogatory and superior mindset of her family and community. Aibileen creates a mission to positively influence the young life of Mae Mobley. Aibileen expresses numerous positive traits through her work, prayer, and friendships. Through her spiritual connection, Aibileen is able to provide support for not only herself, but also others in her community by including them on her prayer list. Aibileen demonstrates positive friendship qualities throughout the novel, she validates her positive traits as she supports and prays for her friends. Though Aibileen has positive attributes, she is unable to escape from
There are many artistic elements located throughout the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett. These elements help to create images in the readers’ minds, which make the book a strong piece of art. At the same time, the book is also a powerful cultural artifact due to the incorporation of valuable past and present themes of culture. Even though Stockett artfully enhances her book with literary elements, The Help is a stronger cultural artifact than it is an artistic work of literature.
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.
“‘Don’t you ever wish you could change things?”’ (10). In Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960’s, woman ahead of her time, Miss Skeeter, proposes an idea to write a book about the lives of colored maids in Jackson. Aibileen and Minny, two maids, are among the first ones to agree to help Skeeter, despite the potential danger to themselves. In The Help, Kathryn Stockett creates an engaging and immersive world that explores racism and social injustice by using well-developed writing, the ideal amount of imagery, and strong characters.
Aibileen has always done her job and has stayed quiet through all the nasty words that have been thrown at her, however she finds something inside which makes her realize that she has to stick up for her self. She grows confidence
The narrator of Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl, who is implied to be a mother, reveals much of her worldview through the story’s dialogue. In this dialogue, she both instructs and scolds her a girl who is implied to be her daughter. The instructions that the mother imparts to her daughter in Girl offer a deep insight into what the mother believes is good for her. In teaching these lessons, the mother is preparing her daughter for what she believes is her daughter’s future. Thus, these lessons are setting the expectations that she has for her daughter within her world.
The girls’ perspective changes throughout their time in Africa, and their outlook on the world changes dramatically. The 4 daughters witness “women sauntering slowly down the road with bundles upon bundles balanced on [their] head” (Kingsolver 31) and other major tasks that women have to accomplish. They begin to understand that the women have such important roles in the Congolese society. One eye opener is when one of the Congolese children dies. They realize how important that child was to their mother, and how one of the main goals of a women is to keep her children alive. Another eye opener for the girls is when they have to take on those roles themselves. They have to spend all day cooking meals for their family. That helps them realize how important women’s roles are. It helps the girls grasp a new appreciation for the Congolese women, and their roles in society. By putting this in the daughter’s perspective, it allows the reader to understand how their characters are being change throughout the
The Help occurs during the segregation period during the year of 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi. The main character is Aibileen Clark, a 50-year-old African American maid spending most of her life raising white children ever since her teenage years. She works for Elizabeth Leefolt, a wealthy housewife, who is the best friend of the antagonist, Hilly Holbrook. Elizabeth has a child named Mae Mobley whom Aibileen is very close to. Aibileen’s best friend is Minny Jackson; she is a maid who works for Hilly Holbrook and her mother Missy Walters for nearly a decade. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is a young, white American woman, seeks a successful writing career after graduating from the University of Mississippi and returns to home, soon to find out her long-time maid, Constantine, supposedly quit working for her family; this was a great mystery for Skeeter because Constantine did not write to Skeeter explaining why she left. Skeeter found out Hilly Holbrook, Elizabeth Leefolt and their friends believe blacks “carry various diseases to the white people”. Hilly drafted a disease
The final scenes of the movie illustrate the racial injustice Aibileen receives when she exposes The Junior League Women’s Society with the book. Hilly, the president of the Junior League, is outraged at the disrespect she believes Aibileen displays in revealing the true character of the white women of Jackson. Hilly accuses Aibileen of stealing silverware, and makes naive Elizabeth fire her on the spot. However, Elizabeth fails to take into account the needs of her daughter who is dependent on Aibileen for nurturing and compassion because Elizabeth herself fails to provide motherly affection. Aibileen begs Elizabeth not to fire her for the sake of the toddler, but to no avail.
Civil Rights literature has been in hiding from the millions of readers in the world. Kathryn Stockett’s book, The Help, widely opens the doors to the worldwide readers to the experiences of those separated by the thin line drawn between blacks and whites in the 1960s. Kathryn makes her experiences of the character’s, making their stories as compelling as her own.
Kathryn Stockett’s, The Help, introduces two main characters in the novel who reveal their drastic experiences of the day-to-day life of an African American during the early 1960’s. These hard working ladies, Aibileen Clark and Minny, dedicate and spend their lives taking care of white families and raising their innocent children. Discrimination played a big role in the society during this era, and was considered normal; however, these tough and independent women took every day as a new challenge to look for the the best outcome. In the novel, Kathryn Stockett interprets nature imagery to symbolize the traumatic experiences and struggles each black minority undergoes.
Rejecting failure as the standard status quo, Jones shows us different points of views and details to explain what is really going on in this time period in this small families life. The first character that we notice in the story is the little girl, the daughter. Her perspective is probable the most important mainly because she is the one telling the story. The first line she speaks tells us an abundance of information about her mother and how she now feels about her.
The Help brings light to this idea of domestic victims being very mistreated and ultimately being dehumanized because of the color of their skin. “I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the negro side of town. I want to stop that moment from coming – and it come in every white child's life – when they start to think that colored folks are not as good as whites.”(Stockett 80) This passage brings up how children are born with prejudice thoughts and how it is taught by the older generations. Aibileen tries to keep Mae Mobley's mind from being polluted from these horrible thoughts. Critics argue that the maids should not teach the child this because they are not really their parents it still seems as if it is their job to teach the child this because they are so affected. Kathryn Stockett does a great job of demonstrating the racist and prejudice thoughts that affected these innocent
Based off of Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel, The Help is a movie told from an African American’s point of view during the early 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. The three main characters include, Aibileen Clark, Minny Jackson, and Eugenia (Skeeter) Phelan. Skeeter is a young writer who has recently returned from the University of Mississippi. She has been advised by the Elaine Stein, who is the head editor at Harper & Row, to write about a topic she is passionate about, that way she can continue her dream of becoming a serious writer. In addition, Skeeter accepts a writing job down at the Jackson Journal where she writes a housekeeping column. Ironically, she has no housekeeping experience as she grew up with in house help. In order to keep her job she goes to Aibileen, her friend Elizabeth Leefolt’s housekeeper. At this point in her life, Aibileen is just trying to get by. She writes out her prayers on a daily basis as a way to clear her mind since she is fairly reserved on the outside. On the contrary, Aibileen’s friend Minny is also a housekeeper, but she has a rather sharp tongue which doesn’t usually work in her favor. Consequently, she is trying to find a new employer, but is having trouble since there is a bit of discord between her and the most influential socialite in Jackson, Mississippi.
“The Help” is a movie about African-American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi. The two black maids, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, tells their side of the story to a young white woman, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, who is a journalist who decides to write a book from the maids point of views. Skeeters intention for writing this book is exposing the racism they receive while working for white families in Jackson. Aibileen Clark takes care of white children and helps raise them and cleans around the house, while her best friend, Minny Jackson, is an outspoken black maid but has a quick short temper which gets her into trouble later on. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is a white single independent woman, she earned a double-major
“Help people even when you know they can’t help you back”. The Help written by american author Kathryn Stockett was published in the early 2000’s. Set in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, Stockett’s first novel is narrated by three women: Aibileen and Minny are both black maids working for ladies from the cream of white society, while Miss Skeeter is the 23-year-old daughter of one of those pillars of the community. Aibileen has raised 17 white children, but her own son has been recently killed in an accident at a lumber yard; Minny is forever losing jobs because she talks back to her employers; and Miss Skeeter, so called because she looked like a mosquito when she was born, is ungainly