The Help: Week 4--Chapters 16-20

I sometimes see red when I read these pages. I can’t believe the cruelty—it catches me by surprise. The ease in which it is practiced, accepted, expected is so wrong. The loneliness of those it impacts is very raw. For this week’s comments, I’d like to hear how this cruelty impacted and shaped the interactions of the women—whites to whites, whites to blacks, blacks to blacks. Do you see this type of cruelty in your world or have you experienced it? How does it impact the people you observe?

Miss Skeeter finds herself struggling with the impact of the cruelty in her world and her naïve assumption that her desire to have maids talk to her wouldn’t cause trouble. On page 239 she thinks, “They’d killed Carl Roberts for speaking out, for talking. I think about how easy I thought it would be, three months ago, to get a dozen maids to talk to me. Like they’d just been waiting, all this time, to spill their stories to a white woman. How stupid I’d been.” Then, the writing goes on, “When I can’t take the heat another second, I go sit in the only cool place on Longleaf.” She escapes as best she can.

Do you find yourself escaping the reality around you? Where do you go when you can’t take “the heat” anymore?