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Figurative Language In 'The Secret Life Of Bees'

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Language Analysis
No distinctive language or slang is used in the novel, considering it is written as a traditional love story with modern-day realism. However, there are appearances of figurative language and additional motifs and satire used between the main characters. An example of figurative language is," Just because we didn't end up on the same wave, doesn't mean we aren't still a part of the same ocean.¨ ( Hoover pg.218 ). This metaphor, Lily used, expresses how even if she and Atlas didn't end up together, they still lived and accomplished the lives they dreamed of separately. Another example related to the last metaphor is, ¨ I think about how sometimes, no matter how convinced you are that your life will turn out a certain way, all …show more content…

For example, the first use of a motif is when Ryle drops the casserole and hits Lily angrily, bruising her eye and hurting her head. The second motif comes up again when Ryle discovers Atlas´s number in the back of Lily's phone case and pushes Lily down the staircase out of anger. The last time it appears is when Ryle reads about Atlas in the newspaper and hurts Lily for a third time. These three events create motifs and reveal a much darker message that sometimes, even when we don't want to become the thing we fear the most, it isn't always inevitable. Along with the usage of motif, Hoover included satire and used it to make Lily's personality sarcastic and ironic. Lily would use satire in a bad situation to feel lighter and more in authority. For example, when she first meets Ryle and sees him beating up a chair on top of the roof, she says, "So what did the chair do to make you so angry" ( Hoover pg. 9 ). She was already having a bad day because it was her fathers funeral, but this remark helped her relax, and she continues to give these same sly remarks throughout the novel in her benefit. The satire not only includes humor during parts of the book where things go bad, but it also does a fantastic job of capturing what satire would look like in an average person like Lily, who has the same background and experience as her.

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