The Help (Spoiler)

Explore Feelings

Shelby Conine

English 8-6

March 11, 2010

The last scene in The Help is when Aibleen gets fired. She reflects on all the things that have happened to her, Minny, and Skeeter. Ms. Leefolt answers the door and Ms. Hilly walks in. Now, Mrs. Hilly knows that the book was written about Jackson, but doesn't want to admit it. She accuses Aibileen of stealing her silver after letting Ms. Leefolt borrow it. Aibileen trys to explain that Ms. Leefolts new child likes to take things, but Mrs. Hilly won't have it. She orders Ms. Leefolt to fire Aibileen. After a plea from Mae Mobbely, Ms. Leefolts daughter that Aibileen raised, and Aibileen's reminder to her to remember what she told her about the difference between blacks and whites and then Aibileen leaves. Walking down the street, she thinks of all the things shes done and what she's going to do with her life. She thinks she'll write, keep writing for the paper, the job she got after Skeeter left, and she figures she'll get some money from the book. It was a sad but liberating scene that exemplifies the horrible mistreatment the black people of the south had to endure. This scene shows that Aibileen had other things that she's always wanted to do, and now she has that chance. She feels that "[shes] free, like Minny. Freer than Miss Leefolt, who so locked up in her own head she don't even recognize herself when she read it. And freer than Miss Hilly. That woman gone spend the rest of her life trying to convince people she didn't eat that pie" (444).