The Help Analysis Paper

The Help Is an American novel that represents an era of civil rights, written by the point of view of a white educated southern woman, in a very different time period of what the book is set in. The Help takes place during the 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. This novel tells a story about the relationships between African-American maids and their white employers. During the 1960’s, not only in Mississippi but the greater part of the south, African-American women were the nannies and maids to white families for generations and dealt with racism in order to earn an income for their own families. The Help not only touches on a racist time era but a sexist one as well. In The 60’s women were to be mothers and housewives but some wanted to be more than that, this novel tells another story about a young educated southern woman trying to achieve a career in a male dominant profession. The author is Kathryn Stockett, a white southern woman from Jackson, Mississippi. She grew up in Jackson with her own African-American nanny who died when she was sixteen. She narrates The Help as two African-American maids and one young white woman; all live and grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. Stockett’s point of view in this novel is that she was one of those many children in the South that had a second mother who was black and wanted to tell those nanny’s stories on behalf of her own deceased nanny. She makes the two African-American narrators the protagonist, Aibileen and Minny, and the young white women, Skeeter, is also a protagonist who wants to tell the truth about Jackson, Mississippi and does so by convincing Aibileen and Minny and others to tell their stories about being nannies to white families. The Help was published in 2009, the year Barack Obama took office. 2009 was important year for America; it was the year that the first African-American president took office. During the campaign a lot of racial tension started rising, even though America had changed