Editor's Choice
What are the similarities between Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and Katheryn Stockett's The Help?
- Miss Skeeter and Atticus are similar because they both are voicing the truth.
- When it comes to people of color, society tells the general public how to treat them. Example 1 TKM: Tom Robinson's trial the jury just went with what society expected of them and what was the majority. Example 2 The Help: Miss Hilly's Home Sanitation proposal. Everyone was fully for it because it was what was accepted in society.
Quick answer:
Both To Kill a Mockingbird and The Help explore themes of racial injustice and societal norms in the Deep South. Atticus Finch and Miss Skeeter are similar as they both challenge these norms by voicing the truth. The novels highlight societal pressures, as seen in Tom Robinson's trial and Miss Hilly's Home Sanitation proposal, where the majority conforms to racist expectations. Despite being set three decades apart, both stories depict enduring racial prejudices.
To Kill a Mockingbird and The Help are similar in their physical and social settings. Both stories are set in the Deep South, with To Kill a Mockingbird in Maycomb County, Alabama and The Help in Jackson, Mississippi. While Mockingbird takes place in the Depression-era 1930s, The Help takes place in the socially and politically super-charged 1960s.
Although these time periods are three decades apart, they both occurred in times of social stress. White privilege and prejudice was a given in most areas of the country in the 30s, as we see in To Kill a Mockingbird. Tom Robinson, defended by Atticus Finch, is unjustly convicted of raping a white woman and then killed while in custody. Some members of the community are not disturbed by this, and Atticus is vilified by some for having the temerity to defend a black man against a white man.
In The Help, the several of the characters are African-American maids. As the story develops we see how they are mistreated, especially in comparison to white employees. Like Atticus, the main character faces white opposition in her desire to work with African-Americans to improve their situation and bring awareness to their plight. This shows us how prejudicial attitudes have persisted over the course of the decades.
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