Why do you think some people can recover from traumatic events and some can not? The Secret Life of Bees is a book by Sue Monk Kidd that is set in South Carolina in the 1960s. In the story Lily (the main character) runs away from home to get away from her father and finds out more about her mother that died when she was little. On her journey to seeking out more about her mother she finds the Boatwright sisters. Lily learns later in the novel that August, the oldest Boatwright sister, used to take care of her mother. In the end the Boatwright sisters become Lily’s new mother or mothers. Sue Monk Kidd uses T.Ray, May, and Lily to show that some people can recover from traumatic events and some can’t. T.Ray struggled most of his life with traumatic events that he couldn’t. After the war T.Ray …show more content…
Lily soon learned to accept killing her mother and to move on from it. Lily never truly hated herself over what had happened even though sometimes it seemed like it. She learned to be content with herself and not to care what others think. She didn’t even care when people saw her with Zach in public even though it was totally against people’s beliefs at that time “Becca and I watch for Zach in the lunchroom and sit with him every chance we get. We have reputations as “black lovers,” which is how it is put to us” (Kidd 301). Sue Monk Kidd used these characters to show us how differently people handle things in life. T.Ray, May, and Lily were all used to show the different ways people handle traumatic events in their life. Kidd used T.Ray to show how badly traumatic events can screw you up. She used May to show that sometimes traumatic events can affect people so badly that they end up killing themselves. Lastly she used Lily to show that some people can accept what happened to them and what they did and move on. The lesson that she teaches us is that people are all different and can handle things