Ela Gonzalez
Pd 1.3
8/24/15
The Help Symbol Analysis
In the novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, a white socialite named Skeeter Phelan explores the racial prejudice and social classes in Jackson, Mississippi by writing the life stories of African – American maids who tend for white families. Stockett utilizes the toilets and bathrooms symbols to emphasize the theme of racial discrimination and its prominence in 1960’s Mississippi. The repetitive mention of bathrooms and toilets in the book signifies how prejudiced people were back then in the 60’s. White people firmly believed that black people carried diseases that were deadly to others. Hilly Holbrook obviously supported separate bathrooms for the black maids when she said that it was “a disease preventative measure” (Stockett 10). It is also portrayed that this knowledge was very common when Hilly said, “Everybody knows they carry different kinds of diseases than we do” (Stockett 10). These claims are false but the people are too biased to see this. The white people take this seriously and that is shown perfectly in the Home Help Sanitation that Hilly wrote and the beating of Robert brown for accidentally using a white bathroom. Even Mae Mobley was punished by her mother for using Aibileen’s bathroom because she …show more content…
Miss Hilly ate Minny’s poop unknowingly but she did not get sick. This contradicts the belief that if you share a bathroom with colored people will get you sick and it also acts as insurance for the book that Skeeter is writing. When Minny said, “Miss Hilly can’t let anybody find out the book is about Jackson. She don’t want anybody to know that story’s about her” (Stockett 432), it allowed Hilly not to rat out Skeeter because if she did believe that the book was about Jackson, she would also be admitting that she ate Minny’s poop and did not get
Pd 1.3
8/24/15
The Help Symbol Analysis
In the novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, a white socialite named Skeeter Phelan explores the racial prejudice and social classes in Jackson, Mississippi by writing the life stories of African – American maids who tend for white families. Stockett utilizes the toilets and bathrooms symbols to emphasize the theme of racial discrimination and its prominence in 1960’s Mississippi. The repetitive mention of bathrooms and toilets in the book signifies how prejudiced people were back then in the 60’s. White people firmly believed that black people carried diseases that were deadly to others. Hilly Holbrook obviously supported separate bathrooms for the black maids when she said that it was “a disease preventative measure” (Stockett 10). It is also portrayed that this knowledge was very common when Hilly said, “Everybody knows they carry different kinds of diseases than we do” (Stockett 10). These claims are false but the people are too biased to see this. The white people take this seriously and that is shown perfectly in the Home Help Sanitation that Hilly wrote and the beating of Robert brown for accidentally using a white bathroom. Even Mae Mobley was punished by her mother for using Aibileen’s bathroom because she …show more content…
Miss Hilly ate Minny’s poop unknowingly but she did not get sick. This contradicts the belief that if you share a bathroom with colored people will get you sick and it also acts as insurance for the book that Skeeter is writing. When Minny said, “Miss Hilly can’t let anybody find out the book is about Jackson. She don’t want anybody to know that story’s about her” (Stockett 432), it allowed Hilly not to rat out Skeeter because if she did believe that the book was about Jackson, she would also be admitting that she ate Minny’s poop and did not get