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.
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