Exploring The Controversial Themes in 'The Help'

The Help Themes
One of the greatest books in history known as The Help was published in 2009. Kathryn Stockett, the author, had an interview with Donna Florio about why she wrote the novel. One of the questions that Florio asked was ‘Did you realize the book might be controversial?’; Stockett responded like this, “The fact that I'm a white, privileged young woman writing in the voice of a black woman broke every rule my grandmother taught me. But I believe it's our job as human beings to imagine what it feels like to be in someone else's shoes, whether it's the President or a woman cleaning up the kitchen. That's how we learn to be better people” (Florio). This quote is better explained through the characters in the novel. Controversy is shown

The Help takes place in the 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. During this time, there was violence toward all African Americans. This was organized by a group called the Ku Klux Klan. “The racial terrorism ranged from cross-burnings and church-bombings to beatings and murder” (Media). This book articulates the difficulty of being colored because it is found as a minority group in society that is fallaciously treated as subhuman. When writing from the perspective of the black maids Stockett uses an antiquated form of speech that makes the maids sound uneducated. Stockett starts from the very beginning of the novel. Aibileen says, “Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that’s what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning” (Stockett 1). This represents how black people talked, but show how hard they always worked without getting any compliments. Racism takes place when Hilly Holbrook, one of the antagonist, tries to push through a sanitation initiative so that all the white homeowners have a separate bathroom outside for their black maids. Hilly says, “All these house they’re building without maid’s quarters? It’s just plain

“This is what is expected from a society that teaches black people and white people to hate each other, but where they also live side by side” (Shmoop). Love is shown through the close bond between the black maids and the white mother’s daughters. Aibileen and Mae Mobley. Mae Mobley loves Aibileen because Aibileen is the one who taught her to love. In this novel, it shows that nurturing love is not limited to blood relationships. Even when times get tough with the racism Aibileen still loves Mae Mobley just as much. Skeeter and Constantine also had a loving relationship with each other. Constantine taught Skeeter to love herself and not to buy into racial prejudices. Constantine mysteriously disappeared when Skeeter was in college, and no one would tell Skeeter what happened to her. Aibileen later told Skeeter what had happened, “We was all surprised Constantine would go and… get herself in a family way. Some folks at church wasn’t so kind about it, especially when the baby came out white. Even though the father was black as me” (Stockett 358). When Skeeter is interviewing the maids, she does not use the interviews to find about Constantine, but she is always on her mind. Friendships were made, but also there were significant losses. A lot of characters lose vital friendships and relationships. Skeeter loses Constantine, her childhood maid. She also loses her childhood friend, Hilly, after she published