Analysis Of The Help By Kathryn Stockett

“Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else”(pg. 71). In 2011, a movie adaption was released of the book, “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett, a book told from the perspective of three women in the 1960’s as they write a book about the lives of maids in Jackson, Mississippi. The two media forms of the same story have many similarities, along with differences. Four significant elements, listed from least to most important, are assessed for how they affect the same story told in two different ways. The least important thing to be kept or changed is that in both forms of “The Help”, Miss Charlotte, Skeeter’s mother, refuses to die. 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