The Help: Similes 9 key examples

As Aibileen remarks, Elizabeth's legs are so skinny that "she look like she done growed em last week." According to Aibileen, Elizabeth's thinness indicates that she is too young to care for her child. She doubles down on her interpretation by saying that Elizabeth is "lanky as a fourteen-year-old boy." Aibileen thinks Elizabeth is too thin and apparently young to be a good mother. From the plot of the novel after this early passage, it seems that Elizabeth is simply neglectful and does not care very much about Mae Mobley, regardless of her own physical size. But here, Aibileen remarks that that neglect seems like a consequence of Elizabeth's thinness, as she seems to associate bigger bodies with the kind of people who are naturally nurturing (an unfair association, but one that sheds slight on Aibileen's negative view of Elizabeth as a mother).

The simile compares prayer to electricity because "it keeps things going." There are a great number of electric gadgets that appear prominently in the novel, especially domestic ones like air conditioning and refrigeration. These devices would have become common in most homes within Aibileen's life. As such, it makes sense that she would see electricity as a supernatural force, like prayer. 

This simile shows Aibileen's earnest, practical faith in Christianity. She believes that the act of prayer will guarantee that this conversation will "continue." This helps explain Aibileen's anxiety over telling her stories to Skeeter later in the novel: Aibileen believes that by writing something down (as she does her prayers), she makes it more likely that it will continue. So she worries about doing the interviews with Skeeter, as writing down her experiences might cause her circumstances to continue. In this case, she simply does not want to talk about the bathroom. So she turns off the electric switch of prayer, hoping Skeeter will leave her alone.

First, Aibileen clarifies the cruelty of Elizabeth's racism. Elizabeth thinks that Aibileen, like all Black people, have uncontrolled diseases and have to be separated. Because of this, Aibileen knows that changing things in Jackson will be far more difficult than Skeeter thinks. Aibileen is frustrated with Skeeter both because she thinks that changing things would be easy, as well as because Aibileen does not want to be bothered by these questions from a White woman in the first place. 

In Aibileen's simile, Skeeter thinks changing things will be as easy as "changing a lightbulb." "Changing a lightbulb" is often used idiomatically as an arbitrarily easy task, especially in jokes ("how many ____ does it take to change a lightbulb?").  In other words, Skeeter thinks it will be as easy as a menial domestic task, the kind of task that Aibileen would usually do anyway. Thus, the simile works on multiple levels, encapsulating Aibileen's frustration with Skeeter. Aibileen shows that Skeeter not only thinks that making change in Jackson will be easy but that it should be done primarily by Black workers themselves. 

Hilly's name comes out "bitter as a bad pecan." A hard, rotted nut represents Aibileen's curt, unequivocal response of "Miss Hilly," full of disdain for Hilly and her oppressive bathroom bill. Aibileen often compares her disdain for White people to a "bitter seed" growing in her chest. 

Note that Skeeter knows about the bathroom bill, having heard about it at the luncheon with Elizabeth and Hilly in Chapter 1. But while that bill has had great effect in Aibileen's life, it seems as if Skeeter had nearly forgotten it until Aibileen brought it up. Stockett's narrative, with its three rotating narrators, shows the same events and concepts from multiple perspectives. Skeeter's and Aibileen's different awareness of the bathroom bill shows the inconsistent effect of the law on Black and White people in Jackson.

Minny compares "truth" to "water washing over my sticky-hot body." Through this simile, Minny connects the racism and oppression in Mississippi with its hot, humid climate. Just as Minny sweats through the muggy southern weather—though this scene takes place in December, it is still hot outside—so too does she struggle through the cruelty and rudeness of White bosses. Minny often complains in the novel about the heat and how she sweats worse than anyone else; this is consistent with Minny's constant desire for truth and fairness, often to her own detriment.  In contrast, "truth," the real stories of the experience of Black housekeepers, feels like cool water, in contrast to this hot oppression. The pleasurable, cleansing experience of the truth will prove to be so enticing to Minny that it will eventually cause her to agree to participate in the book.

Skeeter opens the door and finds Hilly's hands are "knotted together like ropes." This simple but effective simile describes Hilly's cold, contained anger, which Skeeter immediately understands to mean that Hilly searched her purse. Hilly's anger is so strong that it seems like the tightly-knotted ropes quickly seize on Skeeter's heart, as well. The simile's use of ropes also evokes bondage, drawing up associations of slavery and other forms of oppression, in which ropes control human bodies. Here, that same racist oppression becomes Hilly's anger at Skeeter for attempting to advocate for desegregation. 

In Aibileen's experience, White women "like to keep they hands clean," so they would not beat a maid who has broken the rules but would instead systematically and slowly destroy her life. Aibileen describes this as "a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches' fingernails." This makes the racist behavior seem esoteric, unnatural, and disgusting. Aibileen's simile frames white women as strange outsiders, reversing the usual ostracism of Black women by white society.

Aibileen's simile also compares White women's methods to the "picks on a dentist tray." She describes these "tools" in a long passage after this, saying that White women will get an unruly Black woman fired from her job and then kicked out of her apartment, and then they will get her family fired from their jobs before finally getting them kicked out of their apartments, too. As Aibileen describes, "they take they time with em," and by the end, such punished women have no choice but to flee Jackson, destitute and humiliated. As Aibileen understands, white women are able to do all of this because they have the support of landlords, law enforcement, and other authority figures. The simile's connection to "picks on a dentist tray" makes it seem like those "witches' fingernails" are also precise, practical, and official. The simile evokes a dentist who is allowed to use sharp, painful tools as much as she wants because she is a medical professional. The comparison to dentists' tools argues that even if White women's methods are strange and harmful, the White women retain the support of institutions and thus can act with relative impunity. As a whole, this simile shows Aibileen's cutting understanding of the powers that White women hold in racist Jackson society. 

Minny gives an evocative description of the addict's reverence for their drug of choice: Celia looks at the bottle "like it's Jesus in there and she can't wait to get saved." Celia never appears to be especially religious in the novel, so Minny interprets this as an unusual level of devotion for her boss. Minny is thoroughly annoyed by this discovery, given that she has had to care for multiple alcoholics in her working life. This annoyance makes the simile coolly ironic, as Minny disparages Celia's seemingly religious faith in alcohol. 

Minny will later question why Celia still drinks whiskey while she is trying to have a baby. But, as is later revealed, these bottles do not have whiskey in them, but Chocktaw "catch tonic," a mixture of molasses and water. The mixture was supposed to make it more likely that Celia would conceive. Later, the reader understands that Celia looks at the bottle "like it’s Jesus in there" because she wants desperately to have a child and seemingly cannot. The novel's strict first-person perspective hides this truth until later, relying on Minny's perception of the moment.

Charlotte leaves after folding a blanket "like a cherished letter." Charlotte's clean, beautifully decorated home is seemingly the most cherished thing in her life. She treats a practical item, like a blanket, as if it is fragile and ephemeral but adored, folding it "slowly and perfectly." It seems as if Charlotte understands that the beautiful, intricately decorated life to which she is accustomed is in fact fleeting. Charlotte's own daughter, through her work to publish the stories of domestic servants in Jackson, attempts to undermine the system of White wealth and power that her mother loves. The simile used in this scene helps illustrate Charlotte's character, which is relatively unexplored in the novel.