Comparison between the novels: To Kill a Mocking Bird and The Help

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To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee tells the story of a little girl growing up in a small Southern town during the 1930s, and facing everyday issues such as racism and growing up, and The Help by Kathryn Stockett shows the lives of black maids in the 1960s working for white women and feeling the effects of both racism and friendship from them. Despite the fact that the two books are from different time periods, The Help and To Kill A Mockingbird by are very similar novels because Celia Foote and Mayella Ewell both come from poor, white families, because both books examine society’s oppressive expectations of women from that era, and because both books show white people’s good relationships with the black people that work for them.

In both books, there are examples of girls who come from white families below the poverty line. Mayella Ewell from To Kill A Mockingbird lives in the dirty, rural part of Maycomb county with her crude siblings and abusive father. Everyone who lives there knows that “Maycomb's Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump.“ (227). They’re too poverty-stricken to live in a respectable community or even somewhere clean. It’s nearly the same way where Celia Foote comes from. By far, Celia comes from the poorest background out of all the characters in The Help. When Aibileen finds out from Celia that she grew up in a poor, Mississippi town called Sugar Ditch, she comments on how “Sugar ditch is as low as you can go in Mississippi, maybe in the whole United States...even the white kids looked like they hadn’t had a meal for a week.” (39). Her statement on how the white children even looked hungry, implies that the black people living in Mississippi aren’t prosperous, but growing up in a town like Sugar Ditch a...

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...rk for them. Celia Foote from The Help grew up in one of the poorest towns in Mississippi where everyone was starving, and Mayella Ewell from To Kill A Mockingbird lives behind the town garbage dump with her bratty siblings and abusive father. Scout Finch enjoys being a typical “tomboy” and roughhousing with the boys, but her aunt insists that she learn how to act like a proper lady so that she can grow up to be one. Skeeter Phelan is focused on advancing her career as a writer, but her mother wants her to find a husband, settle down, and start a family. Lastly, the Finch’s maid, Calpurnia is seen as a member of their family, and Atticus refuses to ever fire her, while Lou Anne and her maid Louvenia are close friends that help each other through tough times, both financially and mentally.

Works Cited

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Help by Kathryn Stockett

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