THE BOOK SHELF

We see the concept of belonging in Kathryn Stockett’s novel ‘the help’ through the very different ways that different people live in Mississippi during the 1960s. We see this in chapter two when one if the narrators, Aibileen, is describing how she lives as a coloured maid:

“Jackson’s just one white neighborhood after the next...but the colored part a town, we one big anthill. As our numbers grow bigger, we cant spread out. Our part a town just get thicker.”

The use of setting within these lines creates the mood for the entire novel. It shows us that even though the text is set around fifty years ago, belonging and alienation were both still experienced.

The literary device contrast is also used to show the social gap between the upper and lower class in the text. Which gives a feeling of unfairness to the text, right from the beginning. This shows us that when people are given criteria in which they have to fit in order to belong to either the upper or lower class, it promotes a sense of inequality as people aren’t being judged on who they are as people, but on what they look like and other such things.

 

Barriers to belonging are a clear idea in ‘The Help’ as it talks about coloured people not welcome in white society except for being maids and how white people, as a result, are not trusted or accepted in coloured people’s lives outside of their work. Their is a clear feeling of prejudice among both groups. We see this when Minny gets a new boss who has a great life (in Minny’s eyes) but the boss is uncertain if she is happy enough. To this concern Minny thinks:

“Ain’t that white people for you, wondering if they’re happy enough.”

The use of colloquial language within this excerpt creates a feeling of jealousy and bitterness on the persona’s part as they do not have the choice of her employer. They are forced to be content with all of the little things that they have as they do not have the option to have levels of happiness, if they did, they would never be happy enough. This shows again the gap between the two classes and how while it is unforeseeable for the two classes to interact, the lower class still wants to have to opportunity to be equal with the upper class.

 

We see the concept of belonging in Stockett’s ‘The Help.’ We see it especially in the way that the two classes of people divide because of one thing- skin colour. Each class is exclusive and the only difference is that the white people have more power and influence. This is why a young, white, aspiring writer (Miss Skeeter) decides to combat this issue in her first book. To do this she needs to get help from the maids that work for her and her friends without anyone finding out. When Skeeter’s mother finds out how much she sympathises with ‘the help,’:

‘She points her her finger at me. ‘They are not like regular people.’

The use of third person plural creates a feeling of separation and segregation as it implies that the person talking thinks themselves above a group of people (in this case the coloured people). This shows us that sometime prejudices prevent people from even trying to get along. It can blind us to other people's true nature and base our ideas about them on stereotypes or other general things. This tells us that we must be careful to take people on face value and try not to have pre-conceived ideas about others because otherwise we become a barrier to belonging.