Lexicon
Vol 4, No 1 (2015)

Racial Discrimination in Kathryn Stockett’s "The Help"

Amalia Putri Maurilla (Universitas Gadjah Mada)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Apr 2015

Abstract

Kathryn Stockett’s novel titled The Help is a narrative novel about the lives of African-American maids named Aibileen and Minny who received discriminative treatments from the white masters around 1960s in Southern United States. This research aims to answer two objectives, which are; to explore the racial discrimination acts toward the black maids and to investigate the effects of racial discrimination to the black maids’ lives. Since the present writer analyzes the discriminative treatments from the white masters toward the black maids based on the real social condition in the era of 1960s in Southern United States, Sociological Approach is considered as the most suitable approach to be applied. In addition, Fred L. Pincus’s theory about type of discrimination is also used in analyzing the discrimination acts. The result of this research paper shows there are two types of discrimination as seen in the novel; individual discrimination and institutional discrimination, and those discrimination acts reflect the social condition of 1960s in Southern United States. Meanwhile, racial discrimination affects the lives of the black maids in term of distrust toward white people and insecurity.

Copyrights © 2015






Journal Info

Abbrev

lexicon

Publisher

Subject

Humanities Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media

Description

Lexicon, Journal of English Language and Literature, is an open access, peer reviewed, academic journal published by the English Department, Universitas Gadjah Mada in cooperation with the English Studies Association in Indonesia (ESAI). It is devoted primarily to the publication of studies on ...