The Help by Kathryn Stockett Book Analysis

Good Morning Putnam Valley Listeners!

Welcome back to “Bookworm” the podcast where we tell you if a book should be on your booklist or have a bad review on google.  Today’s classical book of the week is “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. 

To understand this book we should go back to Jackson Mississippi in the ’60s, and know the historical event in the United States, the civil rights movement. The same story is told from three different perspectives. The story is told by Aibileen, our main character who is a maid and takes care of kids, Minny Aibileen’s best friend who’s also a maid who speaks her mind no matter what, and Skeeter, a college graduate who wants to be a writer. Keep in mind our two characters Aibileen and Minny are black and Skeeter is white, back then they weren't allowed to have any connection unless it worked. Throughout the book, we see how our two characters experience racism on an everyday basis and they tell us what they do for the white families. But one day  Skeeter asks Aibileen if she could change the way life is, would she do it?   That's where our story begins: Skeeter wants to write a book from the perspective of the maids from Jackson of what it is like to work for white families. Skeeter, with the help of Aibileen, tries to recruit as many maids as possible to write about their experiences, but most of them are scared of what people might do if they find out,  since they were speaking about them. And it would be suspicious if a white person was meeting with a black person in Mississippi,  people would think they are trying to help the rise of the civil rights movement which people didn’t want because they thought that way the things were was a perfect life. And we’ll see how Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter find a way to write this book possible and give the people of Mississippi a taste of their own medicine. 

Now the question that everyone might be asking themselves is, what makes this book a classic?  Well, let’s go back to how we define literary classics. As for the majority of people when they think of a classic most of the time they think of a book that was written a long time ago, and it’s still known for its popularity or how its story makes so many references around the media.  But here at “Bookworm” we define a literary classic as a book that makes the reader wonder what might happen on the next page, make their characters break their boundaries or rules that they are supposed to follow on their society, or how the character is unique even if they all look the same they are big differences between them that makes them unique and separates them from the rest making you love the character. And something we all love is the villain that we are supposed to hate. And one of my favorite elements of what makes a book classic is the little secret, clue, or foreshadowing/flashback that we keep reading about but we don't find out until the right moment. But keep in mind that everyone that listens to this podcast has their definition of classic for their books.  “The Help,” a novel about the relationships between African-American servants and their white bosses in 1960s Mississippi, has the classic components to please the reader: it highlights unique and strong women, has a page-turning plot, clear villains, a secret, the irony of racism,  and a bit of a history lesson.

Kathryn uses the authorial choice of the first person of view to create a bond between the reader and the character. Which makes the reader understand how the character feels, and their actions. This allows the reader to sympathize with each of the characters equally. And the story would be more reliable. This allows the reader to see the same story through different eyes, which is useful in creating a well-rounded narrative since Aibileen and Minny have different experiences than Skeeter due to their race. And how writing this book might affect them differently. For Aibeleen and Minny the consequences for telling their stories and publishing them would be so bad; Such as losing their job, having to worry about their safety, getting lynched, arrested, and even killed. On pg 136 we read Minny’s opinion of how dangerous writing this book can be for her and Aibileen “ I Love Aibileen, I do. But I think she’s making a king-sized mistake trusting a white lady. And I told her too. She’s risking her job, her safety ``Another example that supports this claim of risking their lives telling these stories is how when people found out Minny used the wrong changing room pg  “ You Know what’ll happen if people catch us? Forget the time I accidentally used the wrong changing room, I had guns pointing at my house”  But for Skeeter was more like a risk, her consequences would be: people disliking her, being kicked out of clubs, and losing her connections/relationships with important people in the town.  On pg 425 “I have nothing left here except mother and daddy and staying here for my parents will surely ruin the relationship we have” We can see how the consequences are not the same just because of their skin color. The point of view on this book helps to support why this book is a classic, we see how the characters are unique and their experiences in the 1960s are different. Which makes the reader keep reading and understand the perspective of the characters. 

Our next authorial choice is Irony, one of my favorite devices throughout this book. An irony is a form of figure speech in which people deliver or say a bold statement but their actions speak otherwise without them noticing it.  The irony in this book shows how hypocritical people can be when they are racist and they live a life where they say they are good people when they are the opposite of it. And we also see some examples of situational irony. A perfect character is the villain of the book Hilly. She’s a very open racist person, even if she calls herself a normal person who only follows the law and cares about black people. An example of this is how Hilly does not want to use the guest bathroom bc “She’s upset a black person uses the inside bathroom and so do we” on pg 7 Hilly pressures her friend Leefolt to build a bathroom for Aibileen because Hilly believes that black people have diseases. Page 8 “ Everybody knows they carry different kinds of diseases than we do”. After Hilli demanded skeeter to write her bill known as “Home help sanitation initiative”  in the newspaper demanding that all houses with maids of color should use a separate bathroom. But the author uses Hilly’s racism against her and creates a situational irony for her, Hilly’s bill was in the newspaper but with a small adjustment telling everyone to drop off their old coats at Hilly’s house they should leave their old toilets in her house. ‘Drop off your old toilets at 228 Myrtle street. Well be out of town, but leave them in front by the door” pg 174. This literary device makes a bond with the reader to keep them interested in the plot of the book. This supports our definition of classic.  The reader's attention is caught by the book and moments like this where the villain has a taste of their own medicine.

Well folks this is everything for today. I hope you enjoyed our little summary of “The Help”. I also hope that this book might have caught your attention too as it caught mine. See you next week for another episode of the bookworm.

Also remember to not discriminate against someone because they are different,  if you do there might be a chocolate pie out there waiting for you. You will get this joke after you read the book. Goodbye.