ISU Book Synopsis

The novel that I chose to analyze for me ISU was The Help by Kathrynn Stockett. The book is about a young girl named Skeeter who lives in Jackson, Mississippi, and portrays her interactions with the African-American maids who work in her white, prejudiced town.

The Protagonist, Skeeter, is a young southern girl born and raised in the small town of Jackson, Mississippi. Skeeter attended Ole Miss University, but besides her experience at school she has never really left her home town. Growing up, Skeeter had a very tight connection with her maid, Constantine. Constantine worked with Skeeter's family for many years and Skeeter looked to her as a motherly figure at times while her own mother was busy. This connection would be very important in the story because it not only gave Skeeter respect for maids, but proved to her that maids could be people to and that they have emotions, families, and opinions.

Interestingly, The Help has quite a few major themes within the story, and outlines many issues. Examples of some major themes would be society and class, violence, family, racism, a sense of home, education, judgement, and the role of gender. The most prominent role, however, would definitely be racism and prejudice as that is the backbone of the story.

To summarize the novel, Skeeter returns from school and acquires a job writing a cleaning article for her local newspaper. She asks Aibileen for advice and meets up with Aibileen for interviews about old tricks of cleaning. Eventually, these interviews turn into much more personal stories of how Aibileen, Minny, and other African-American maids are treated by their white households. Skeeter ends up writing a novel about her small town from the perspective of the maids without the white people knowing, and it becomes a national bestseller. The book also outlines many relationships between white people that exemplify exactly what was wrong with this time frame.

The Oedipus Complex

The Oedipus complex is evident in many stories, especially Oedipus Rex. The Oedipus complex can be defined as: "a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex" ( Encyclopædia Britannica). The reasoning behind the name is that in the story Oedipus Rex, Oedipus accidentally slays his father and marries his mother. Obviously this is a prime example of the Oedipus Complex because Oedipus, being a male, would somehow be connected to his mother in a primitive sense, and in the story he marries his mother. Similarly, in theory, Oedipus should have a sense of rivalry with his father. Just as the complex implies, Oedipus actually murders his father without even realizing what he has done.

In my opinion, the Oedipus complex is a hyperbolized version of an actual thing. By this I mean that sometimes people end up with others who look like their mother or father, but I don't think there is a desire towards ones parent. I feel like this another classic example of freud trying to be a psychological innovator finding odd sexual theories in everything that happens. For example, my mother is an artist, and yes I do like artistic girls but there is definitely no sexual attraction to my own mother because that is kind of gross.