The Help by Kathryn Stockett is very similar to Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. What caught my attention when I read SLoB was the honey the sisters use for everything. It is their lifeline and they use it for cleaning, eating, and curing illnesses, even to soften their hair or use in a bath. This is similar to how Minny describes Crisco in the Help. In this novel, “ladies rub it under [their] eyes and on [their] husbands scaly feet” (Stockett 52). However, this doesn’t stop them from using Crisco to “clean[ing] the goo from a price tag [and] tak[ing] the squeak out of a door” (52). In both books, something as simple as honey or vegetable shortening can have so much importance and so many uses in the characters’ lives.
When I read about Robert Brown, another part of Secret Life of Bees popped into my mind--Zachary Taylor. I see Zach and Robert as very similar characters. Both help out a kind motherly figure, either August or Aibileen. In both the novels, Zach is arrested after a friend of his throws a bottle at a group of white men. The men were waiting for a white movie star and his black girlfriend to come into town with the intention of hurting them. He stood by his friends and did not reveal to the white men which one of his friends threw the bottle. Therefore, Zach and all of his friends are taken to prison. Robert is also involved in an incident relating to segregation and civil rights. However, Robert is killed. This happens after he uses a white bathroom by accident because there was no sign saying it was whites only. This accident cost him his life when “[t]wo white [men] chased him and beat him with a tire iron” (117). Though there may be a few differences between them, both of them were violently discriminated against.
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