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. Skeeter mother’s only concern is for Skeeter to find a husband. Skeeter’s ambition to become a writer starts with her idea to write a novel about from the view of the black maids and nannies in Jackson. Aibileen, who lost her son after he was ran over and dumped at a hospital, works as a maid for a family. She watches after the seventeenth child of a white family. Minny, Aibileen’s friend and a maid, raises children of her own and keep secrets of the white women she works for. The unlikely trio begins to write the stories of the life of the maid from their viewpoint. It is socially unacceptable and against the law in Mississippi to discuss integration. Skeeter needs to recruit more maids to tell their stories. However no maids are willing to help until a series of events happen that change their minds. The book published called “The Help” with all of the stories having hidden identities. The white women of the town begin to question who the true characters are and where the book is actually taking place. Some of the women swear up and down it is not Jackson to protect themselves from humiliation. The movie along with the book the three wrote during the movie depicts how life was really like in Jackson for black families.
There are several areas within the movie that describe what live is Jackson was like. There is a scene in the movie where