Magento Commerce

1.    How much of a person’s character would you say is shaped by the times in which they live? What other factors shape people? Can people’s ideas evolve? How?

 

2.       To what extent do you think a person's flaws, such as racist attitudes and behaviors, can be forgiven because it is the norm in the surrounding culture?

 

3.       Why did Skeeter have a different perception of race than her mother, her friends and much of her town?  What characteristics allowed Skeeter to make the decisions she did in the book? 

 

4.       How did Skeeter’s relationship with her Mother, Constantine, Aibileen, Stuart and her friends both shape and reveal her true character?

 

5.       Hilly is terribly cruel to many people in the book, yet has a very loving relationship with her children. What motivated Hilly in her various roles?

 

6.       Compare Elizabeth’s mothering to Hilly and Skeeter’s mother.  Do you think it is possible to be a good mother despite deep character flaws?

 

7.       What motivates Aibileen?  What are the characteristics that define Aibileen?

 

8.       Do you think that Mae Mobley will grow with the same perception of race as her mother, given what she’s learned from Aibileen?

 

9.       What did you think about Minny's revenge?  Compare her actions with Hilly’s pie to her relationship with Leroy.  Why were they so different?

 

10.   Discuss Minny’s relationship with Celia.  How did they help each other?

 

11.   How much do you think the dynamics of relationships between black people and white people have changed?  Compare to the dynamics in our current local culture here in North Texas between white people and other ethnicities (Latino, etc.).   Do you think there are still vestiges of racism in relationships where people of different ethnicities work for people who are white?

 

12.   How would Hilly, Elizabeth, Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny behave in today’s culture?

 

13.   Explore the hypocrisy in working to help starving children in Africa, while not helping black people that lived across town. Why did people do this in our history? Does it still happen today?

 

14.   The Help has been a very successful best-selling book. If the author had been black, would the book have been perceived differently?