Questions for The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Icebreaker: What was your earliest recollection of racial
differences?
1.
There
are several perspectives or voices in this book. We’ve had this before in other novels we’ve
read e.g. My Sister’s Keeper. Did you
like this format? Did it help you or
hinder you in your enjoyment and understanding of the book?
2. Did you think any perspectives were
missing? (White women) Is there a
perspective or someone’s story you would have liked to have heard more
directly?
3. How much of a person’s character
would you say is shaped by the times in which they live? (Minnie, Celia, Elizabeth)
4. Like Hilly, Skeeter’s mother is a
prime example of someone deeply flawed yet somewhat sympathetic. She seems to care for Skeeter – and she also
seems to have very real feelings for Constantine. Yet the ultimatum she gives to Constantine is
untenable; and most of her interaction with Skeeter is critical. Do you think Skeeter’s mother is a
sympathetic or unsympathetic character?
Why?
5. What drives Skeeter to write the
book that crosses the lines in her southern society even at the expense of her
well being and the well being of those who have helped her?
6. Did it bother you the lengths
Skeeter was willing to go to in order to be in a relationship with Stuart? Do you feel she was so desperate to get
married that she seemed willing to overlook many of Stuart’s faults and that she
even fell into the “Southern Belle” beauty standards her mother is always
pushing on her?
7. Why do you think both Minnie and
Skeeter hear Hilly’s scream when she finds out she (Hilly) is in the book? (pg. 413-414)
8. What do you think of the good
stories the maids tell in their book?
9. The relationships among the black
women are portrayed as very different from those among the white women. What are these differences and where do you
think these differences come from? (Aibileen
has a position of power in the black community and Hilly in the white but they
exercise those powers differently – The black women used the royalties from
their book to aid the maid that had been sent to jail)
10. One of the themes in this book
is the misunderstandings and faulty assumptions the characters make about one
another. Where do you think these come
from and where do they lead? (Constantine
and her baby – Minnie and Celia)
11. What do you think Skeeter means
by her comment on pg. 418 “But Lou Anne, she understood the point of the book
before she even read it. The one who was
missing the point was me”? (Lou Anne is
the white women who was helping her maid and their family)
12. One of the main themes of this
book is “crossing the line”. What lines
do we still need to cross in our lives?
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