Reference no: EM131154760

Given the reading reflection.
The Reading Reflection Topic is: "The Help : Silent Shout Out to the World"
Check for grammar and a diction.

The Reading reflection is:
"The Help : Silent Shout Out to the World"

The Help has a unique feature of 3 narrators: Aibileen Clark, Minny Jackson, and Skeeter Phelan. Each of them struggles with their very own problems and they solve their problems as a team. Aibileen and Minny tell Skeeter what is it like a life of black housemaids , and then Skeeter is going to publish all the stories she heard. Skeeter succeded to publish the book "The Help", which contained all the struggles and hardships of northern housemaids.

The Help is Kathryn Stockett's debut novel. It has been favored by the critics as a highly readable and accurate portrayal of life in Jackson, Mississippi during the early civil rights movement. Toby Clements at The Telegraph says of The Help, "Each of the many relationships between the large cast of characters is perfectly captured, and there is a layer after layer of irony....but most impressive-and attractive-is the blend of rage and humor with which she writes and that is what makes this novel at once so horrifying and yet so savagely funny."

While most critics have hailed the novel as a success, some have criticized Stockett for her use of outdated dialect. Janet Maslin from the New York Times, said, "The trouble on the pages of Skeeter's book is nothing compared with the trouble Ms. Stockett's real book risks getting into. Here is a debut novel by a Southern-born white author who renders black maid's voices thick, dated dialect." However, Janet Maslin praises the novel later on in the same review, saying that Aibileen's and Minnie's voices "leap off the page in all their warm, three-dimensional glory."

Heller McAlpin at the Christian Science Monitor says of The Help, "By addressing not just the injustices but the inexplicable love' that flourishes between servants and their employees, 'The Help' arouses both admiration and indignation."

The consensus among critics is that The Help is an accurate and highly readable novel set in the south in 1962, accurately portraying the lives of black maids and the white women who employed them.

The novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett portrays the role of the mother by using the modern stereotype of the white neglecting mother, and the loving, caring, colored mother figure. She showcases the stereotype in the Leefolt household and the Phelan household. Kathryn Stockett uses the stereotype throughout her feminist novel to showcase her personal relationship with her mother and with the colored help. Stockett further uses her novel to convey the idea that both colored and white mothers are just "two people (Stockett 530)."

On the other hand, the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe portrays the role of the mother as loving and caring, and applies it most of the characters that play a mother role. For example, the characters of Emily Shelby, Eliza Harris, and Mrs. Bird. Stowe does not show any difference in the manner that either a white mother or a colored mother portrays the role. Stowe portrays the role in such a manner as a result of her desire to gain support, mainly referring to women, against the abolitionist movement, which is why she includes characters such as Emily Shelby. An ulterior, purpose Stowe's, abolitionist and feminist, novel was to convey the same idea that Stockett wished to convey, which was to show that there is no difference is found between white and colored mothers. She also portrays the role in such a manner to show that mothers can have an impact in the beliefs of the men who seem to dominate everything outside the household, as it is made evident by Mrs. Bird.