Allie Henson
English 3A
Mr. Boatwright
2.27.14
The Help
There are moments in our lives when we find ourselves at a crossroad, afraid, confused, without a roadmap. The choices we make in those moments can define the rest of our days. Of course when faced with the unknown, most of us prefer to turn around and go back. One person can change many lives – for better or worse. In “The Help”, a novel by Kathryn Stockett, there is a young white woman, Skeeter, who lives in Jackson, Mississippi, and uses her talent of writing in order to open the eyes of the people around her and to give realization of separation between the whites and colored. Skeeter’s book discussed the ideas of equality, unity among all and impacts of other’s opinions that can ruin one’s innocence.
This book strongly addresses the idea of equality and opportunity for everyone. Skeeter is constantly pushed by her mother and friends to get married. She never has the opportunity to choose for herself and “[She] always looks like somebody else told her what to wear” (5). The author said this right in the beginning of the book to give the impression that she does not relate to her friends and the other white ladies. They are always the ones telling others how to live, and therefore tells that Skeeter is more in relation to the colored maids who can never decide for themselves.
Women at that time were only seen as being the housewife, committing the rest of their lives to staying at home with their children. This idea and lifestyle was pushed so much that Skeeter claimed, “I’ll never be able to tell Mother I want to be a writer. She’ll only turn it into yet another thing that separates me from the married girls” (65). Realizing the lack of support her mother gives, she...
... middle of paper ...
...elieve in lines. [She] doesn’t anymore. They were in our heads. Lines between black and white weren’t there either. Some folks just made those up a long time ago” (378). Everyone is born into this world innocent, and it is only the influences of others that plant the seed that further taint ways of thinking.
Skeeter was brave in the way that she stood up for ideas of equality, unity among all and impacts of other’s opinions that can ruin the innocence of children. She took risks in discussing those major ideas in order to make a change in the future and to prevent future generations from making the same mistakes. Yet she understood that tragedies happen, and giving up wasn’t an option for her. The pain everyone feels: it’s life. The confusion and fear is there to remind that somewhere out there is something better, and that something is worth fighting for.
In The Other Wes Moore, the author and a neighbor have the same name, Wes Moore, and they both begin their lives in similar ways. However, as their lives progress, they begin to part. For example, both “lost” their fathers when they were young. Because of the way their mothers respond to this loss, the boys’ lives begin to separate. Both mothers have different responses to challenges in general, which eventually leads them to respond to their child’s actions in contrasting ways. Throughout this novel, readers learn that depending on how a mother decides to react to the negative actions of their child’s actions, the child can either lead a successful life or lead a life of failure.
Whittier begins his story by writing, “Woman’s attributes are generally considered of a milder and purer character than those of man. ”(348) Right of the bat, the reader has a stereotypical idea in his or her mind about how a woman should act and what characteristics she should hold. Whittier does this to show how different and unique his main character, Hannah Dustan, will be seen throughout his piece of work. Whittier then goes on to say, “Yet, there have been astonishing manifestations of female fortitude and power in the ruder and sterner trials of humanity; manifestations of courage rising almost to sublimity; the revelation of all those dark and terrible passions, which madden and distract the heart of manhood.
After witnessing Abigail’s affair with Detective Len Fenerman, Susie recalls when as a young child, her mother used to tell her tales of mythology, such as Zeus and Persephone, rather than princess fairytales like most mothers would. The young mom liked to recount these stories because “she had gotten her master’s in English―having fought tooth and nail with Grandma Lynn to go so far in school―and still held on to vague ideas of teaching when the two of us were old enough to be left on our own” (Sebold 149). As mentioned, becoming a mother to Susie and Lindsey forced her to press pause on her ambitions to step further in her career and education. However, she held on to these dreams since there would be an opportunity to carry out what she had planned when her children grew up and no longer needed round-the-clock attention or care. These hopes were quickly crushed after the birth of Buckley, the third child in the Salmon family. Abigail realizes that she would be forever constrained to motherhood “since suburban life, for women, meant commitment to home and family, to house care and child care” (Hacht 143). Since she became a wife and mother in the late 1950s, Abigail Salmon represents how many women felt during the Seventies as ideologies of feminism and motherhood clashed. To these women, domesticity
Although there were numerous efforts to attain full equality between blacks and whites during the Civil Rights Movement, many of them were in vain because of racial distinctions, white oppression, and prejudice. Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi recounts her experiences as a child growing up in Centreville, Mississippi. She describes how growing up in Mississippi in a poor black family changed her views of race and equality, and the events that took place that changed her life forever. She begins her story at the tender age of 4, and describes how her home life changed drastically with the divorce of her parents, the loss of her home, and the constant shuffle from shack to shack as her mother tried to keep food on the table with the meager pay she earned from the numerous, mostly domestic, jobs she took. On most days, life was hard for Anne, and as she got older she struggled to understand why they were living in such poverty when the white people her mother worked for had so many nice things, and could eat more than bread and beans for dinner. It was because of this excessive poverty that Anne had to go into the workforce at such an early age, and learn what it meant to have and hold a job in order to provide her family. Anne learned very young that survival was all about working hard, though she didn’t understand the imbalance between the work she was doing and the compensation she received in return.
“The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his” (Moore, 2011). This quote perfectly describes the book The Other Wes Moore. This book was a story about two people who have the same name and grew up in similar environments, but had very different lives. The author of the book, Mr. Moore, became successful and was given the opportunity to receive “one of the most prestigious academic awards for students in the world” (Moore, 2011). On the other side of the spectrum, the other Wes Moore “will spend every day until his death behind bars for an armed robbery that left a police officer and a father of five dead” (Moore, 2011). Mr. Moore decided to contact the
To the modern white women who grew up in comfort and did not have to work until she graduated from high school, the life of Anne Moody reads as shocking, and almost too bad to be true. Indeed, white women of the modern age have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living that lies lightyears away from the experience of growing up black in the rural south. Anne Moody mystifies the reader in her gripping and beautifully written memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, while paralleling her own life to the evolution of the Civil Rights movement. This is done throughout major turning points in the author’s life, and a detailed explanation of what had to be endured in the name of equality.
...o Skeeter as well. The community comes together to support her and would do anything for the book. They are willing to lose their jobs over it because that feel that Miss Skeeter did so much for them, not just by giving them money from the proceeds of the book but by allowing them to have a voice and speak out for how they were truly feeling. I feel that in the beginning Skeeter may have felt bad about writing the book and may have had some doubts about what she was doing but in the end her alliance changes and she found what she really wanted to do and who she really wanted to be, it even cost her a relationship but she stayed true to who she wanted to be. This book was very inspiring to me, it helped me remember that we are all different and that’s ok, we need to learn to appreciate those differences in others if we want to be appreciated too. What a great story.
By the end of the novel Skeeter is a new person, she can no longer be manipulated by Hilly like everyone else. “It was almost four months ago that the door was sealed shut between Hilly and me, a door made of ice so thick it would take a hundred Mississippi summers to melt it.” Skeeter becomes a much stronger person and learns to stand up for herself in the end. “I follow quickly behind Hilly to the front door. She opens it and walks in like it’s her own house. ‘Hilly, I did not invite you here,’ I say grabbing her arm.” Her relationship with Aibileen is much stronger by the end of the novel. Skeeter, a woman who was at first nervous to even talk to Aibileen, now talked to her on the phone frequently and smoked cigarettes with her in her home where she spent most of her evenings. “I think about the first time Miss Skeeter come to my house, how awkward we was. No...
The 1960s was the time when women and men were treated with cruelty, were paid barely enough money to spend on food, and were beaten senseless just because of their race. Though it sounds like an excruciating life to live, many of these African Americans lived life to the fullest despite what others thought of them. In Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, African Americans are treated hastily by whites, as analyzed by the book’s historical significance, personal analysis, and literary criticisms to fully comprehend life in the 1960s of the south.
For this assignment, the movie “The Help” was chosen to review and analyze because it presents a story of fighting injustice through diverse ways. The three main characters of the movie are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson, two colored maids. Throughout the story, we follow these three women as they are brought together to record colored maids’ stories about their experiences working for the white families of Jackson. The movie explores the social inequalities such as racism and segregation between African Americans and whites during the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi.
Discrimination is “the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things.” On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was ordered to give up her bus seat to a white passenger and refused. This act of opposition defied all normalities for the average black woman. The treatment of a woman who was black compared to the treatment of a white woman in that age was completely discriminatory. Rosa Park’s strength to influence justice against racial segregation has slowly influenced justice against all discrimination. “The Help,” a 2009 novel written by American author, Kathryn Stockett, is a story about African-American maids working for white households in Jackson, Mississippi set in the early 1960’s. “The Help” depicts these women as individuals similar to Rosa Parks, who want to influence change and equality. Through “The Help,” the reader can relate the thoughts and views of the characters to our society today, particularly on the grounds of race, class and gender.
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 injustice to an end. The relationship between Blacks and whites in this novel generally take on the tone of a kindly, God-fearing Jesus Christ-loving Black person, placidly letting blacks and whites work out their awkwardness regarding race and injustice. Eventually both the black and white women realize how similar they are after all, and come to the conclusion that racism is an action of the individual person, a conclusion mutually exclusive of racism as an institutionalized system that stands to demonize and oppress people based on the color of their skin and the location of their ancestry.
One of the major projects of Hilly Holbrook’s is to get a law passed requiring white families to build bathrooms for their black children to use. At one point in the story, Skeeter finally realizes that what is going on is wrong. She grew up with these women but realized she knew them. After she reads the Jim Crow laws in the library, she starts to understand. “But then I realize, like a shell cracking open in my head, there’s no difference between those government laws and Hilly building a bathroom in the garage, except ten mines worth of signatures in the state capital.”
The Help describes white women to have a typical image by appearance and role. Aibileen describes Skeeter as "She wearing a white lace blouse buttoned up like a nun, flat shoes so I reckon she don’t look any taller. Her blue skirt gaps open in the waist. Miss Skeeter always looks like somebody else told her what to wear." (Stockett 4). This image is not typical for the American woman. Skeeter is not like the women in her town, so she looks funny from her hair to her feet. Unlike women of her age who wear their hair in puffs and bobs, Skeeter isn 't concerned about her frizzy hair. She dresses in ordinary clothes while the other women are fashionable and dressed in modern pleated and matched blouses, skirts and shoes. When Skeeter is not wearing common clothes people also get shocked, "And there Miss Skeeter in a red dress and red shoes, setting on my front steps like a bullhorn," her dress is too brightly colored for others (118). Skeeter doesn 't draw attention to her body when she dresses. However, Celia dresses different from
Many women in modern society make life altering decisions on a daily basis. Women today have prestigious and powerful careers unlike in earlier eras. It is more common for women to be full time employees than homemakers. In 1879, when Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, there was great controversy over the out come of the play. Nora’s walking out on her husband and children was appalling to many audiences centuries ago. Divorce was unspoken, and a very uncommon occurrence. As years go by, society’s opinions on family situations change. No longer do women have a “housewife” reputation to live by and there are all types of family situations. After many years of emotional neglect, and overwhelming control, Nora finds herself leaving her family. Today, it could be said that Nora’s decision is very rational and well overdue.