Courage In The Help

“ Courage sometimes skips a generation. Thank-you for bringing it back to our family”. The Help shows that courage is needed to bring about change. ‘Discuss

Minny and Aibileen helps Miss Skeeter write a book called “The Help” and the people they work for, in an attempt to open people’s eyes as well as trying to change things for the blacks in the community and how they would get treated. The book is what helps Minny break away from Hilly Holbrook and Leroy. Some incidents occurred within the book that helped Minny free herself from Hilly. One was just by speaking and telling Miss Skeeter everything that went on while she worked for Miss Hilly, however what really secured everything including the book is her including how Miss Hilly ate the chocolate pie with human waste in it. When Miss Hilly read this book she attempted to come after Minny by getting Aibileen fired.

Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, is not just about overcoming racism, but also about overcoming the constant human power struggle. The novel also showed how people treated each others, regardless if they were the same race. Throughout the book, Skeeter is ignored and cut-off by her friends while Minny is abused by her own husband. These two events happened even though each was the same race. Even the woman Minny worked for was being ignored because of who she married.

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.

1.0 INTRODUCTION The Help is an example of American drama film. It was released in August 9, 2011 and its length was 146 minutes and directed by Tate Taylor. The film was adapted to a novel, where there has been a long tradition of African- American women serving as “The Help” for upper-middle class white woman and their families. Descriptions of historical events of the early activities of thecivil rights movement are peppered throughout the novel, as are interactions between the maids and their white employers.

The profound novel, The Help, can be interpreted as having many themes and subliminal messages about life, but to truly understand the meaning of them, the conflicting points must be recognized. Due to the fact that the setting of the novel is during segregation, the friction between blacks and whites is what creates the novel. Although it is easily recognizable that one of the main conflicts is segregation, there is a major conflict between two prominent characters, Hilly and Skeeter, wealthy white women. Some of the issues within this novel lye in location and the social aspects of living in a small southern town in that time. There are several underlying conflicts in The Help, but the main one that sets up all the themes are the conflicts

The Intolerance Backlash In the last century, the epidemic of racial discrimination in America is showcased by how society functioned in areas like the South. Their entire social structure once revolved around segregation of not just race, but gender as well. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the normalcy and expectation of racial prejudice is demonstrated in 1930’s deep south. In the movie The Help, directed by Tate Taylor, the ever growing civil rights movement of the 1960’s began to change the view of some southern citizens. The main characters, Scout Finch and Skeeter Phelan, both witness the bigotry and injustice within their society.

In Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, characters’ actions demonstrate the importance of finding one’s inner voice and making right decisions even though they go against social prejudice. As the novel suggests, women live in Jackson are expected to play the role of virtuous wives and caring mothers. Miss Celia is one of the characters that suffers from the gender stereotype and is not able to control their own life. Fortunately, she finally overcomes these gender norms and decides to present her true self. After the Benefit, Minny tells Celia the pie story about Miss Hilly, which motives Celia to cut down the Mimosa tree.

“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.

Nazish S. Quraishi Professor Ahmadi ENGL 101-13 10 January 2016 Courage Triumphs over Racism The film “The Help” (November 24, 2011) of genre historical fiction directed and scripted by Tate Taylor is a faithful adaptation of the bestseller novel The Help penned by Kathryn Stockett. It is a story about how three women team up to form an alliance and secretively work on a writing project that would be shunned otherwise. The film portrayed the time when segregation existed between the whites and the blacks to be specific in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi. The film began with a flash-forward scene where Aibileen a black domestic maid is being interviewed, how it feels to work for a white family?

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.

Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, is a novel that not only shows the severe discrimination in the south but also reveals the dishonorable act of keeping secrets. The novel is set in the early 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. This teaches us how the unfortunate truth of how african american maids were treated by the white families they worked for. It explains the lives of Celia Foote who was a white lady who doesn't believe in the social boundaries of Jackson, Mississippi and a strong african american women named Aibileen Clark. Secrets are impractical because they don't come without a cost, not all secrets are as bad as you think they are so why keep them, and at the end of the day you will feel a breath of relief and feel free.

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

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

She feels that the way black people are treated in Jackson is unfair. She’s kept quiet for awhile, but the opportunity comes for her to write about it and possibly help things, so she took it. Skeeter is an aspiring writer who is very independent. She’s been given the chance to write a book and possibly get it published, so she decides