Forgiveness In The Secret Life Of Bees

Time is like a beehive. In the center hides a sweet future, but the rough edges on the outside are often hard to get through. In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens lives in a small town in South Carolina with her abusive father she calls T. Ray and nanny, Rosaleen. She’s also carried the burden of accidentally killing her mother at the age of 4. When Lily runs away from home with Rosaleen to find out more about her mother, she meets August, May, and June Boatwright, three sisters who own a honey company. They fall in love with this family and their way of life, and Lily even learns about her mother’s life from August. T. Ray returns looking for his daughter, but he ends up leaving her to stay with the Boatwrights. Lily finally starts to live the normal life she always dreamed of having after she forgives her past. Lily’s unnerving past contributes to the novel’s theme of the importance of forgiveness through her relationships with her father, her mother, and even herself.

Ray has always been tough. With his abusive punishments and harsh words, Lily was building a hatred for such an un-fatherly man. The breaking point of their relationship, from Lily’s perspective, is when T. Ray says that her mother left her. Dumbfounded, Lily ran away from home to prove what she thought was a horrible lie. He eventually left her to live with the Boatwrights, and Lily forgave her father for the awful things he has done. “I still tell myself that when he drove away that day he wasn't saying good riddance; he was saying, Oh, Lily, you're better off there in that house of colored women. You never would've flowered with me like you will with them.” (Kidd 531) Lily imagined that T. Ray thought she would have a better life with the sisters she loved so much rather than living with