The Movie The Help

Improved Essays
The Help movie was set in the 1960’s during the civil rights movement. It is about a smart, southern girl named Skeeter, who everyone just so happen to adore. She just returned from college and decided to move back home in Mississippi. Skeeter then decides to be a writer. Not just any writer, but a writer that interviews black women who have spent their whole lives taking care of prominent southern families. She starts of with one lady named Aibileen, who opens up to her about the hard times and things she has been through on a daily basis. She found herself making progress and soon, her news spread around. More women came to her to tell their life stories. Skeeter then loses friends due to the collaboration with these black ladies. Although that happened, her hard work became published into a book, and she faces more enemies than she did before. …show more content…
If they did so, they were usually arrested and sent to prison. By 1960, blacks and whites were able to be together. They could eat together, drink from the same water fountain, use the same bathrooms, and surprisingly even get married. Back in 1991, 48% approved blacks and whites to marry. Today, it is 85% percent approved. Although the percentages went up, some couples are still looked at funny. Some people have a hard time adjusting to the interracial relationships. This will take a long time before it is “truly accepted” to society today. This is why I love The Help. It is a great example for the civil rights movement. The movie teaches people about history. This is something that we should not

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    The Help features a strong protagonist, Aibileen, an African American maid. She is a warm, compassionate woman who bears racial oppression with a quiet resilience. The bitterness over the death of her son prompts Aibileen to help Miss Skeeter reveal the truth about how “white” women treat their maids. Her honourable principles and desire to hold Jackson accountable for the oppression of black domestic workers, gives her the strength to continue working on the project, despite many dangers threatening her. Aibileen is always captured wearing grey-and-white uniforms, blending in with the starched tablecloths and sideboard doilies.…

    • 225 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    By legalizing the marriage of interracial couples, society has grown more accepting of this.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    To Kill a Mockingbird and The Help compare and contrast The Jim Crow Laws were statutes enacted by Southern states, beginning in the 1880s, that legalized segregation between African Americans and whites. To Kill a Mockingbird is a book by Harper Lee that follows the life of a young girl named Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, Who lives in the segregated south and the obstacles she has to go through when her father Atticus Finch is chosen to represent an African American named Tom Robinson, who is convicted for rapeing a white woman. The Help, directed by Tate Taylor, is a movie that shows the obstacles African American maids have to go through in the segregated south, and how a young woman named Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan stood up against the crowd and decided to write about the work experiences of…

    • 1115 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The story is told in the perspective of three different characters: Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are working black maids from one side of the town and Skeeter is a white college graduate and aspiring writer from the opposite side of town. Throughout the story, Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter collaborate on writing a book telling the stories of how black maids were…

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    African American Maids

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Also in the later part of the book Miss Skeeter was offered a job in New York and she was not sure if she was going to go, but Aibileen told Miss Skeeter to go up to New York because Aibileen wanted what was best for Miss Skeeter. The author wants us to learn that we can be friends with anyone, no matter what skin color they have. Also not judge someone by the color of their skin or to not judge a book by its cover. If Miss Skeeter would have judged Aibileen by her skin color and not got to know that Aibileen has the biggest heart out of anyone she has ever met then they would have been able to write the…

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    based on African American maids who suffer and work a lot in their daily lives and Skeeter who is a humble white person comes up to help them out to receive their right and to have other better jobs than maids. Skeeter in the novel is a special character that drives the maids and acts as their guide to hope and her personality as well because she has respect towards them and cares for them. Skeeter comes up to the maids to help them get their story out in public and by doing so, she will write journals keeping track of the maid’s daily life(Taylor). Although Skeeter is doing this to get her job, she feels empathy towards the maid's life since they struggle a lot in the white community and don't receive their rights, thus she writes about that to make a change for them. Minny is a maid who gets fired for using the bathroom of her boss and feels an act of revenge on her boss.…

    • 1514 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Elie Wiesel's The Help

    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Skeeter is another main character that is important to the story. She warmheartedly remembers her past maid, Constantine but does not have information about her disappearance and current situation. Her dream to write and love for her dream job has brought her maids to come…

    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In college Annie embarks on the journey of becoming a civil rights activist. She was sick of living in Jim Crow society being controlled by racism and sexism. She became involved in civil rights organizations like the NAACP and CORE. She participates in sit-ins, rallies, and other forms of activism, but feels like the movement is not doing all that it can. The lynching of Emmett Till is particular really impacts young Annie.…

    • 254 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Skeeter does not believe this is the right way to treat anyone and decides to write a book from the maids point of view. One scene from The Help that showed skeeters reaction was when all of the girls were at Elizabeth 's house and started talking about how black people should not be allowed to use the same bathrooms as the whites.(Taylor) Skeeter felt absolutely terrible about this and was shocked that they would say all of these terrible things, especially in front of Abilene. At one point she felt so bad that she personally went up to Abilene and apologised for the things that were being said. This shows Skeeters moral beliefs because she is making it very clear that she thinks that we should all be treated the same.…

    • 1064 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There was hardly any room for storylines for real human connectedness between the black and white women. The author could have acknowledged racism as a vehicle of white privilege rather than espoused hatred throughout the book, yet the appeal of this fictional narrative would have not met critical acclaim or popularity. The novel did not capture the core of life in Mississippi in the 1960’s, where women endured and resisted inequality without the help of a “ white saviour” to rescues them, worked in their employers homes and raised their children alongside their own, wishing those children would not fall victims to lynch mobs or racist acts of violence. Skeeter’s role as the appointed saviour to the alienated maids demonstrates my argument that white characters will often become a more central theme in novels involving black characters. If literature or films such as the “The Help” are going to include people of colour as main characters, than their voices should not be ignored in order to appease mainstream audiences by throwing in a white character and focusing on their voice.…

    • 1338 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She openly speaks against the new idea, even though it causes tensions in the group of women creating new problems. The mistreatment of the black maids that take care of the white families is hard for Skeeter because she was raised by a black maid, and thought of her as part of the family, so when other blacks get dehumanized, she feels like she had a duty to help them out. Another scene in The Help was Skeeter trying to get a job at a writing company. She gives the man her resumé who is very impressed that as a women, she has an education and all the work she has done. He makes a comment “Girl don’t…

    • 1066 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Introduction The ensuing paper discusses the family dynamics and interpersonal relationships present in the movie The Help. Most specifically, the relationship between a mother and daughter will be explored. We will begin by providing an overlay of the movie’s characters and basic story line. Following this overview, the writings will delve deeper into the environment, values, and roles that shape the Phelan family.…

    • 1497 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Movie Review – The Help ENGL – 201 October 4, 2012 “The Help” based on a best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett, a story of three women who take extraordinary risk in writing a novel based on the stories from the view of black maids and nannies. Set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, a young girl sets out to change the town. Skeeter, who is 21 years old, white, educated from Ole Miss, dreams of becoming a journalist. She returns home to find the family maid, Constantine, gone and no one will explain to her what happened. Skeeter acquires a job as a columnist for the local paper at the being of the movie.…

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Help is a movie that was adopted from Kathryn Stockett’s novel by the same name. The film takes place during the 1960s in the seemingly bright and blooming town of Jackson, Mississippi, however as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that beneath this town lays a depressing world of prejudice, hate, and separation. The story of the film is being told from three different women’s perspectives: Skeeter Phelan, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson. The film’s protagonist, Skeeter, is a young white woman that just recently graduated from college and dreams of being a published writer going so far as to contact one of the biggest publishers in New York. As the plot progresses, it becomes clear that Skeeter doesn’t fit into this small town Jackson…

    • 1214 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “ Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle”(Napoleon Hill). Skeeter throughout the book becomes accordingly more isolated from the southern women community that she's grown up with making it a struggle to fit in. This leads to her becoming self-aware of her role within the segregated society, which shocks her and moreover motivates her into writing her book The Help while changing her at first timid, unsure personality. The writing project also helps her change in personality while creating a friendship with Aibileen that never would have been possible if Skeeter hadn't have gone against the community. The major traits she displays in the book are that she's unsure, ambitious, and kind hearted.…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays