Theme in the Help

Theme in The Help Were you ever wondering what the South was like in the early 1960? Well, in the novel The Help, Aibileen is the black maid for the Leefolt family. She works hard raising her employer’s daughter and keeping the house clean. Skeeter, another character in the novel, comes to Aibileen with the idea to write narratives from the point of view from twelve colored maids. Aibileen and Skeeter find themselves engrossed in the narrative when word gets out to the town that the maids are telling the writer of what life is like in the households for which they work. The town is starting to struggle with racism. The whites are not getting mad at the stories but getting enraged that their help is going against them. This is setting the theme for racial tolerance.

In the beginning of the novel, the racial tolerance was shown towards colored people because whites thought they were better than the colored people. For example, a character from the Novel, Miss Hilly, wanted to pass a bill called the Home Help Sanitation Initiative. This means that their hired help should have their own bathroom outside. This is showing racial tolerance because colored people are not clean enough to use their employer’s bathroom indoors. The colored people had their own neighborhood and had to be segregated from the white people. The colored had their own bus, hospital, and bathroom even when they were at work. Racism is also shown by the colored people not being allowed to be seen with the whites unless they were working for them. Another black maid, Minny, was accused of stealing silver from her employer, Miss Hilly. Soon after being accused of this crime, Minny was fired and could not find a job with another landowner. This is racism because Miss Hilly ruined Minny’s life and did not think twice about it or care at all. This is how racism was shown in the beginning of the novel.

In the middle of the novel, the colored people were scared.