"The Help" Pgs 1-165: Setting the Scene

This past week, I have started reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I can't say much aside from the fact that I my knowledge of the time frame and a lot of the involved history with the subject matter was very fuzzy. My background for the book was not very strong, so although I enjoy the story so far, I felt that I couldn't talk about any of it without some research. I have thus looked at a critical review of the book that analyzes the facts about the book. Despite the hyper-critical voice present in the article, it brought up many problems with the book with reliable sources to back the author's claims.

Let's start with the story. It takes place during the 1960's in a racially charged Jackson, Mississippi. The book follows three alternating narrators, an African American maid named Aibileen, another named Minny, and a white woman named Eugenia (referred to as Miss Skeeter). The three share their viewpoints in much the same way as the characters in My Sister's Keeper, and unfortunately, are subject to the same pitfalls that said characters were: poor characterization and in a few cases, unbelievability. When the many maids were on the bus openly badmouthing their "white superiors," something in the back of my head told me that this seemed a little odd given the time and location. Here's where I did my research. Aibileen mentions Rosa Parks winning the right for them to sit wherever they please on the bus, when it was the Freedom Rides, the movement of many civil rights advocates to attempt to use white-only facilities, which was met with arrests and heavy bias in trials. Ultimately it was ordered, with the aid of 400 federal marshals, to overturn the states' segregation of interstate travel laws. This was happening in 1961, just a year before the start of this book, and the struggles of segregated buses did not end with it. Already the story has a historical hole, and this is less than 30 pages in.

Source: http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Civil-Rights-Movement.aspx?p=2

Source: https://trainwreckdsociety.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/kathryn-stockett.jpg

With regards to the review, I found several points that suggested that the author was not familiar with the time she was writing in. From the absurd use of self-deprecating terminology (the idea of an African American valuing "blacker" skin) to the repeated anomalies of odd character actions. And although I have to do more research on the facts challenged by the review, it was particularly convincing and I can't help but have a bias when reading.

Source: https://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/facts-surrounding-the-help/

The story has only begun, and I realize I didn't go into too much detail on the aspects of the story at all. I'll try to focus on that next blog.

Reading "My Sister's Keeper" Pg. 260 - End

Alright. Let me get this out of the way before I start: I am not a good writer. For as much as I could go into how a good ending works and what can kill an ending, I admit to falling for most of the traps associated with writing an ending. I understand why an author would choose to make a surprising ending, twist ending, storybook ending or whathaveyou. But this I will get into after a few points are discussed.

To begin, all character's motivations (save Jesse, but I'll get to that) are revealed in a medley of revelation and closure. Campbell reveals that he is epileptic, Anna reveals that Kate had asked her to instigate the suit for her medical emancipation, Brian reveals that he wanted to let Kate die rather than watch her suffer, and many other things of less importance.

Something I never really touched on which I should have was the poor handling of Jesse as a character.  Or rather device, as aside from being the "antihero with a caring heart" trope, he is used only when something else important that doesn't directly involve him occurs. Where characters like Campbell and Anna are tied back to Kate just as the book has set up, they have their own voices and histories that are significant in their own right. With Jesse, he is a boy who was ignored and is now taking out his anger. That's all. Maybe that signifies how he was actually treated in the story, but this is disrespectful to a character that could have been much more. Not only is treating him like a plot device poor writing, his character and voice are poorly written as a whole. It's like reading what a mother thinks her brooding teenage boy would say and do.

"Fuck them all" Pg 93, as Jesse drives haphazardly down the wrong side of a highway. 

This line coming from an angry boy that evidently hates the world would be understandable, but the delivery of it along with what was obviously meant as a "shocking" segment where Jesse drives down a highway in his very first narration chapter, show just what Jesse was meant to be from the start. The off-child. The one who had the potential to solve the problems the others couldn't. And Picoult failed to give him a proper presentation. But it's ok because she made him reconcile with his father and made him a police officer in the end, right?!

With that out of the way, the characters appeared to have a proper "happy" ending, for as happy as this book could get considering its subject matter. When all of a sudden,

"Anna's head hit the window with great force, Mrs. Fitzgerald. It caused a fatal head injury." Pg 415

And that takes me back to the start, as Kate is then able to use her kidney and is then somehow cured, able to live while Anna is the sister who dies in the end. The story was built in such a way that this ending makes little sense; it's almost as if the ending wasn't planned until the very end. It was abrupt, out of nowhere, and coming back to Jesse, his reaction isn't shared of all of the main characters. The most damning peace of evidence for this point is at the very beginning:

"In my first memory, I am three years old and I am trying to kill my sister... In the end, though, I did not kill my sister. She did it all on her own… Or at least this is what I tell myself." - Prologue

Kate never wanted to kill her sister. In fact, there was never any evidence to suggest that she wanted anyone else to die other than herself. I somewhat understood it when this applied to Anna, as at the time she was receiving painful treatments for her sister without knowing why. She describes what suggests her smothering her sister in this prologue, and that would not be what Kate would ever do. Yet this mysterious person behind the prologue's sister dies. Plain and simple: the ending was not meant for the book. It was shoe-horned in. And that is my biggest qualm with this title.

In spite of a powerful emotional ride, the ending sours what would otherwise have been an interesting experience.

Reading "My Sister's Keeper" Pg 130 - 259

Continuing the story reveals several characteristics of the characters that weren't immediately obvious  initially. Firstly, Anna, in spite of her relative maturity, is still very much within the realm of a thirteen-year old girl mental-wise. She still cries for her mother, still obsesses over little things, and still is a brooding teenager, and that last point is what really gets me. As much as I understand the desire to make decision's for oneself and have control over one's body, after what she's demonstrated in this section of the book, it seems more and more like Anna is in some neglect-induced teenage rebellion, which acts against her case. The less control she has over her case the more flustered she becomes, and for all of Jodi Picoult's attempts to make Anna out to be a strong young adult, they come off as superficial and skin-deep, which may be intentional as far as I know.

 Ashelyn_Andrae/Shutterstock.com

To begin with, at one point she talks about a date she had with a guy just 3 months prior to the events of the story. She and this guy go see a movie, and she "spent all [her] time trying to figure out how electricity could leap the tiny space between [her] arm and his," (Pg 18). Her clashes with her mother also demonstrate this, in a very realistic way. She acts just like any other kid would, occasionally blowing up but most times being hesitant as her mother pushes her down with accusations and threats. It is in this part of the book that Anna actually breaks down into tears in front of others, as opposed to when she tried hard to hide at the beginning. Emotionally, she is still a thirteen-year old.

It's not just Anna whom I view drastically differently. With further readings involving her father Brian, I've come to realize that he is not courageous, as his being a firefighter would leave the reader to believe. He only hopes for miracles. In the face of adversity, given the option, he will take the coward's way out. This is understandable regarding his job, as he says:

"The safety of the rescuer  is of a higher priority than the safety of the victim… Always."   Pg 142

At the same time, for as reasonable as that is, the book is riddled with metaphors and indirect comparisons. Given the context, this is a reason why he sides with Anna in her case; not directly, but one can tell he isn't about to force his daughter into donating a kidney, even if it would save her older sister's life. He often runs from his fights, choosing silence when his daughter was hurt early in the book and refusing to confront the larger problems when they were present in front of him. He is a pragmatist in a bad way, doing only what he thinks he can do, limited in his willpower and resolve.

With all of the family ordeals going on with the Fitzgeralds, with Kate's kidney failure and the family lawsuit still going on, the last person they need in their lives after reading this section would have to be Campbell. As a lawyer, he's doing his job, but just when I thought he would soften up and actually fight for Anna's benefit rather than making her case a means to an end, he turns around and hurts the family for the case. He makes it clear he is only out for himself:

"There may be a special corner of Hell for attorneys who are shamelessly self-aggrandizing, but you can bet we all are ready for out close-ups." Pg 184

He instilled the restraining order despite understanding that Anna didn't want it, and when questioned about it by Julia, someone who has great empathy for Anna and a history with Campbell, he merely replied:

"I did [talk to Anna] and we were [on the same page]--Sara was coercing her, and Anna wanted that to stop." Pg 187

He is, like Brian, a pragmatist and a coward but in the worst kind of way. Only out for himself, and he has no shame in any of it. Despite what he may have done for Jesse for Anna, I only see a selfish man.