The richness and variety of language is part of what makes the book so appealing and intriguing. The main protagonists are presented with the southern accent ’Law have mercy’. Each character has been presented with their own stereotypical dialect which as a reader contributes to the realistic feel of the novel.
The Novel is written mainly in first person from each of the 3 protagonists perspective. The story is told by 3 different people as Aibileen, Minnie and Skeeter take turns with each chapter. I admire this style of writing greatly as it allows us readers to deeply understand each characters perspective of the story along with their thoughts and feelings. Chapter 25, ‘the benefit’ (the only chapter with a title) is the only chapter told in the third person. This third-person perspective is necessary for that chapter . it is most concerned with Celia Foote; How others react to her extreme sexiness and her extreme nervousness. We would have loved to get a glimpse inside Celia’s head, but Celia wouldn’t have been able to capture all the nuances the third-person narrator captures, since Celia herself isn’t aware of much of what’s going on in the scene. Plus, Celia wouldn’t have been able to reveal that its Hilly’s mother who punks Hilly with Minny’s auctioned chocolate pie.
‘But then I realize, like a shell cracking open in my head, there’s no difference between those government laws and hilly building Aibileen a bathroom in the garage, except 10 minutes worth a signature’s in the state capitol’.
Symbolism and imagery has dramatically been used throughout the novel one of which is the use of ‘toilets and bathrooms’. In some ways, toilets and bathrooms symbolize all that is wrong with the society depicted in the novel. The prevailing belief among most white people in the novel is that black people carry diseases. In addition to that, they also believe a way to prevent those diseases is to use a separate toilet to those of the help. The