...In the book, “The Help”, written by Kathryn Stockett, there are many controversial characters that the reader watches evolve throughout the course of the book. Skeeter Phelan is a character that changes drastically over the course of the book. In the beginning of the book Skeeter is a shy, insecure, young woman who doesn't know what she wants to do or become of herself.All she knows is that she wants to write. For Skeeter’s entire childhood her mom has always put it into her head that she is never enough. Not pretty enough, graceful enough, doesn’t obey enough. Or she tells her she's to much of something. To tall, to outgoing, too much hair. Her mom puts it into her head that she will never get a husband looking and behaving the way she...
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...In my Reading class we read a book called “The Help”. In the book two of the main characters are Celia Foot, and Skeeter Phelan. There are some significant traits that make them similar and different from each other. Skeeter, and Celia both live in a big fancy house that were provided to them in a certain way. Skeeter and Celia both appreciate their maids very much. Skeeter loved her maid Constantin because she raised Skeeter from when she was a baby, and Celia loves Minny because she was her first maid ever. Skeeter and Celia are both about 23 years of age. Skeeter has no white friends because Hilly is upset at Skeeter for doing all the corrupt thing with the colored folk, so for the punishment Hilly fires Skeeter from league editor. Celia...
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...The Help, Kathryn Stockett's debut novel, tells the story of black maids working in white Southern homes in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, and of Miss Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a 22-year-old graduate from Ole Miss, who returns to her family's cotton plantation, Longleaf, to find that her beloved maid and nanny, Constantine, has left and no one will tell her why. Skeeter tries to behave as a proper Southern lady: She plays bridge with the young married women; edits the newsletter for the Junior League; and endures her mother's constant advice on how to find a man and start a family. However, Skeeter's real dream is to be a writer, but the only job she can find is with the Jackson Journal writing a housekeeping advice column called...
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...Race and Racism Race and Racism Tate Taylor’s film The Help (2011) is a drama genre that shows the audience what it’s like to live during the times of race and racism. The film is told from the point of view Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan Allison Janney, who plays the daughter of Charlotte Phelan who has hired her nanny and maid Constantine. Skeeter does not like the unkind words about her friends calling the maid the “help” so she is inspire to write about the experiences of the housekeepers. This film shows Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan “ Hypocrisy and integrity are the larger race-driven which is the major theme. (Goodykoontz &Jacobs, 2014,Chp. 4.3 , para.21). The movie The Help shows racism manifests in the lives of the black maids in a number of ways: they are denied opportunities for educational or professional advancement, they perform repetitive work for white families, they must curtail their speech to prevent violence, and they must use separate facilities. Perhaps most damaging of all, black people are constantly exposed to social messages telling them that they are dirty, lazy, and in all respects less than white people. This film open up a lot of attention when it was written and film. I caused shame to Hilly for being so mean and evil to the “help”. Hilly represented an Adolph Hilter in his days to the Jewish people without having them put to death. Hilly made sure that if something was not her way she had them fired and told other maids not to hire the maids...
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...The Help: Character, Dignity and Self-Respect Rachael L. Tuminski PHI2000 Character, Dignity and Self-respect Paper Capella University February, 2015 Abstract: This paper will examine the parallels and give examples of the teachings of Aristotle, Epictetus and St. Augustine, using the motion picture The Help directed by Tate Taylor. Introduction What gives human beings their character, dignity and self-respect? What makes up them up in humans? Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Epictetus all attempted to answer this very question examining human nature very closely. Aristotle took on the subject of character; Epictetus took on the topic of dignity and St. Augustine the topic of self-respect. In the movie The Help directed by Tate Taylor each of these reasoning’s can be addressed in detail and example. Aristotle and Character Aristotle approached the subject of the virtuous character like this; the soul is in two halves one being the rational and the other being the non-rational. His definition is best discussed in Nicomachean Ethics II.7: “Excellence [of character], then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.” (1106b36–1107a3) An example of this in The Help is in the character of Skeeter Phelan; in the movie Skeeter has come back home...
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...The 2011 The Help, an adaptation of a 2009 book of the same name, was one of the most acclaimed movies of the film season. It was nominated for many industry awards, including Academy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards. The Help is based off the relationship of a white female journalist and two black maids in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960’s. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is the main protagonist. As a “home help” columnist for the Jackson Journal, she interviews Aibileen Clark (the second protagonist) for some remedial advice. Ms. Clark worked for Ms. Leefolt, who had a daughter Mae Maubly whom she adored. These interviews eventually evolve into journals about Aibileen’s life as a maid for white households. Although Aibileen is reluctant to tell her story (due to the danger), the death of Medger Evers and a sermon by her church minister convinced her to “do the right thing”. Ms. Clark manages to convince her good friend Minny Jackson into telling her story. Ms. Jackson was a maid for Mrs. Walters, an elderly woman and her daughter, Hilly Holbrook. Ms. Holbrook, the town’s racist gossip, advocated for separate bathrooms for house help because of “different diseases”. This belief lead to Minny’s firing after refusing to walk through a tornado to an outhouse to use the bathroom. Phelan grew disenfranchised with Holbrook’s racist attitudes, in part to her affection for her house help—Constantine Bates. She then got into contact with Harper & Row Publishing, which agreed...
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...Professor’s Name Course Date Analysis of Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan in ‘The Help” (2011) This paper is set to take a detailed look at Skeeter in the film known as ‘The Help’. In the movie Skeeter is presented as a 22 year old white lady who has recently graduated from Ole Miss College. In addition, she is a fortunate daughter of a large scale cotton farmer at Jackson in Mississippi. Her nickname, Skeeter is given to her by her older brother due to size at birth. He thought she took after a skeeter. Upon her return from school, she realizes a degree of modifications based on the issue of racism. To be precise, she has a changed perception on the relationship between the members of the white households and afro American maids. She wonders why her society adopts a double standard notion at looking at individuals. For instance, she is surprised at the fact that the whites would not let their maids use the same lavatories as them, yet entrusting them (black maids) with the care of their children. Her attitude is heavily attributed to the absence of her favorite maid. She feels it was unfair for Constantine to leave without informing her. As a result, she suspects that something awful must have compelled her to part ways with her family. She later realizes that Constantine had been relieved off her duties upon her act of reuniting with her daughter, Lullabelle Bates. Another change worth noting in Skeeter revolves around the nexus between education and employment...
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...down on as they were property and not human beings. Secondly: Discrimination or prejudice based on race. In 1994, a book called The Bell Curve posited that genetics were to blame for why African Americans traditionally scored lower on intelligence tests than white people, meaning that their colour was to blame for lower intelligence among many other things people accused were to blame on their colour or where they came from.Sadly, racism in the form of discrimination persists in society also. Like for instance, black people have traditionally suffered from higher rates of unemployment than white people. The Help is about African American maid's working in white peoples households in Jackson Mississippi during the 1960's. To make it short, the film is about the young white woman, Eugenia a.k.a. “skeeter” Phelan, who wants to tell the stories of the domestic help, from the maid's perspective and publish it as a book. The main characters in this film would be the black middle-aged maid, Aibileen Clark, who's telling the story and she's spent her life working as a maid, raising white children and she's also...
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...The Help: Chapter 1 Set in Mississippi in the early 1960′s, “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett is told from three alternating viewpoints. One narrator is Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a progressive young college graduate from an upper middle-class, white family who dreams of becoming a writer. Another narrator is Aibileen, a middle-aged African American woman who has been a maid her whole life and who has raised no less than 17 white children in the process. The last narrator is Minny, another African American maid in her thirties. Minny is Aibileen’s best friend, despite the fact that the two women could not be more different. All three women narrate around the same event: the publishing of Skeeter’s novel about working for white women. The story commences in August of 1962 in the kitchen of Elizabeth Leefolt. Aibileen is caring for Leefolt’s plump, two-year-old, Mae Mobley Leefolt, whom she calls Baby Girl. Aibileen's own son, Treelore, was killed months before she began working at the Leefolt residence. Treelore fell from a loading dock and was crushed under a tractor trailer. When the story opens it is the fourth Wednesday of the month, bridge club day, and Aibileen straightens up the house, manages Baby Girl, serves the women food, and overhears their conversation. The women discuss the upcoming Junior League Benefit, and Miss Hilly tells the women present, Elizabeth, Skeeter, and Hilly's mother, Miss Walter, about the Home Help Sanitation Initiative, a bill that requires a separate...
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...The Help, a recent 2011 drama film is the adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel - The Help. The story expresses the story of black maids working for white homes in Jackson, Mississippi around the late 1960s and early 1970s. In this age before the American Civil Rights Movement, black women commonly held low wage employment such as cleaning, daycare, or maid service. A main protagonist, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is a young recently college educated white woman looking to advance her journalistic abilities. She gladly accepts a local newspaper housekeeping advice column called “Miss Myrna” to progress her journalistic experience toward greater positions. As Skeeter knows little about housekeeping, she turns to her local friend’s maid, Aibileen another main protagonist critical to the true narrative. Skeeter is characterized as very progressive for her time period, she can see the injustice and segregation in the country, and around her town that creates a disgusting, racist, and saddening society. She views her new friend, Mrs. Aibileen and her friendly associates as a miraculous caring median to attempt a change in society for the better. Throughout our diverse readings we have dealt little with race relations in the community context of justice. The community itself however, has been a major fundamental principle of a successful and democratic system of justice. Platos – The Republic attempted to characterize and debate justice between scholarly individuals such...
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...generations and separated from whites by law. Segregation had oppressed blacks for so many years. Kathryn Stockett, the author of The Help, shows how racism and discrimination destroyed the chance for African Americans to achieve the American Dream. In her book, The Help, Kathryn Stockett writes a realistic fiction story about the life and roles of black maids in the 1960’s in Jackson Mississippi. Skeeter Phelan, Minny Jackson and Aiblieen narrate the story. Skeeter is a 23-year-old educated white woman who is coming home from college. She lives at home on her family's cotton plantation. She is different from most women in her town mainly because of the maid that raised her, Constantine. “All my life I'd been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine's thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.” She slowly realizes she does not to be a part of the racism her town holds. She loves to write, so she soon devotes herself, at a high risk, to write a book featuring the real stories of the black women who work for the white families in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. The book will be published if she meets a deadline. So she soon breaks all the rules, slowly starts to lose all her friends and crosses dangerous lines to get across the truth of the poorly treated maids. Skeeter teams up with her friend Miss Leefolt’s maid Aibileen and her hardheaded friend Minny to record the stories of their maid life....
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...like any normal black maid until she met Skeeter. Skeeter was not an average woman in Jackson, when they were only supposed to be wives; she wanted to be a writer. Instead of landing the job she wanted to as a journalist in New York, due to not enough experience, Skeeter works for the Jackson Journal answering cleaning questions. The help took place in 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi. Aibileen Clark is a 50- year old black maid who spent her life raising white children. Her best friend "Minny Jackson" was a black maid as well and outspoken, possibly due to having work for such a long time for Hilly Holbrook's mother, Mrs. Walters, that they were very comfortable with each other. Minny had great cooking skills. Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan was an independent thinking white woman who studied in "University of Mississippi" and as she returned after her graduation to her beloved childhood maid, Constantine. Skeeter found out that Constantine quit while she was away. She believed that Constantine wouldn't have left without writing to her. Skeeter's group attend college to find husbands; she is the only one who remains single and wants to pursue a writing career. She lands a job with the local paper as a "homemaker hints" columnist. Aibileen, the maid to her easily influenced good friend, Elizabeth, is asked to help. Increasingly, Skeeter becomes uncomfortable with the attitude of whites towards their "help", especially after Hilly's "Home Help Sanitation Initiative", a legislative idea...
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...“The Help” An emotionally stirring movie taking place in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s, “The Help” stars Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer as three women who share a common motive. This racially tense setting creates the perfect foundation for a drama film such as this. The characters’ personalities in combination with the emotion of the plot develop a socially accurate depiction of the struggles faced by the people of the time. While the racial aspect of the movie is dominant, viewers may also find compassion and friendship within the conversations and encounters of its characters. It is commonplace for white families to have black maids serving them at this time. Aibileen (Davis) is a strong-willed maid who is recovering from the loss of her son. She does her job well, and despite falling victim to rude comments and grueling tasks from her boss Elizabeth and her perky friends, she has taken care of seventeen children over the course of her career. Fresh out of college, Skeeter Phelan (Stone), a good friend of Elizabeth’s, seeks Aibileen’s advice when she is stuck writing a cleaning column for the local newspaper. These conversations ignite a fire in Skeeter- she has the idea of writing a piece telling the story of an everyday life from the viewpoint of the maids of Jackson. It takes some convincing because of the obvious risks, but Aibileen agrees after Hilly, the leader of the housewives, starts a petition to require separate bathrooms in homes for the maids...
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...Final Film Critique– “The Help” Contextual Information Title: The Help Writers: Tate Taylor (screenplay), Kathryn Stockett (novel) Director: Tate Taylor Cinematographer: Stephen Goldblatt, Director of photography Major Actors: Emma Stone – Skeeter Phelan, Viola Davis – Abileen Clark, Bryce Dallas Howard - Hilly Holbrook, Octavia Spencer – Minny Jackson Release Date: August 10, 2011 Type of film: American Drama Based on a True Story Genre: Drama Black women raising white children, and the children loved them, and they loved them back, but yet were not allowed to use the toilets in their employer’s house. These are the moments of the black maids in 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi. Plot and Story The Help depicts the lives of black maids and their white employers exposing the racism that the black maids faced on a daily basis. The time is 1963 set in Jackson, Mississippi during the civil rights movement. The film that follows the lives of two black maids and a southern society girl, Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), who returns home from college, eager to launch her dreams of being a writer. Skeeter wants to write a book to explain that racism doesn’t just mean withholding of education and voting rights. It is told from the perspective of the black maids so it is narrated through the movie as the voice of black maids that suffered the racism from their employers. The interviewing of the black maids, who spent their lives taking care of the prominent white...
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...race in Jackson, Mississippi, in The Help: combination of Whitman’s egalitarianism and individualism and Morrison’s description of inequality 1. Introduction Throughout time the issue of race has gone through several important transitions and therefore it has been a controversial writing topic for many novelists and poets. For a long time African American people were disdained and used as slaves and later on as help in the household. Laws, such as the Jim Crow Laws, regarding race and human rights were very rigorous and those who did not abide the law were punished severely. When thinking about the struggle it has been for those with African heritage and the people who have fought to reach equality, Martin Luther King and Megdar Evers come to mind. The novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett, adapted for the screen by Tate Taylor, is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960’s. A young girl, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan aspires to become a writer and averse to the way her friends treat the African American maids and driven by the love for her own maid Constantine, she decides to document the life stories of the servants and tries to get them published. Throughout the story, a realistic representation of the 1960’s society is being viewed and there are several sides to the story. Firstly a side that describes the inequality, secondly the struggle with the law and its representatives and thirdly a relationship of love and respect between the help and the children they nurture. ...
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