The Help follows the lives of two black maids working for white women during the 1960’s. While helping write a book about their experiences, Aibileen continues to assist her employer Elizabeth, and watches over Elizabeth’s daughter, Mae Mobley....

The choice between conformity and independence is one that every person must make at one point or another in his or her life. This truth has been explored in many novels and is frequently exhibited in the lives of the characters. In almost any...

With the defeat of Jefferson Davis’ confederacy in 1865, the American South became a region marked by poverty. The Civil War not only destroyed large amounts of Southern infrastructure, but also devastated the demographic that would typically be...

We emotionally respond to a text as it has been intentionally set up to manipulate the audience into behaving and thinking in a particular manner. The Help is a historical fiction film set during the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement and outlines...

Devastation through Segregation

Did you know that the state of Mississippi did not officially abolish slavery until February 7th, 2013? Although slaves have not worked the fields of Mississippi since the Civil War ended, evidence of racial...

Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, published in 2009, received critical acclaim upon its release and it remained number one on the New York Times bestseller list for a year. By the time the 2011 film adaptation of the book went to theaters, The Help had...

Kathryn Stockett’s novel, ‘The Help’, and Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Morning Song’ can be closely linked together through gender constructs, especially those enforced upon women. With corresponding themes of motherhood, female identity and a patriarchal...

‘There is the South, then there is Mississippi.’

There is a method to madness in literature when talking about the racial prejudice bordering and grasping the context of American history. Black prejudice and ill-treatment date back to a long time...