Forgiveness In The Secret Life Of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd

“I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It’s a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s an evolution of the heart.” (Kidd) Lily Owens lives in Sylvan, South Carolina in the 1960s with her abusive father T Ray who never lets her forget the day when she was just four years old that she accidentally killed her mother while witnessing an argument between her parents. Through the process of forgiving herself for her mother’s death and forgiving her mother for abandoning her, Lily finds her courage, independence and self-worth. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd demonstrates the hardships of forgiveness through the interactions

We can assume from T Ray’s abusive actions towards Lily both mentally and physically that he is a bitter and angry man. He is violent, selfish and cruel towards Lily, but what made him this way? We learn at the end of the novel that Deborah left T Ray because he abused her and their relationship. Lily tells us that T Ray refused to speak of Deborah to Lily at all. Once when Lily asked him a question about her mother, he got so angry at the thought of her that he threw a jar of jelly at the cabinet. He is so angered by even the thought of Deborah, leaving us to assume that T Ray is still very angry with her for leaving him. He loved her but she left him and because Tiburon, the town they lived in, is such a small town everyone knew and his pride was damaged. He has so much hatred towards her but because she is gone, he cannot talk to her about it. At the end of the novel, T Ray finds Lily at August’s house, where Deborah had also run away to. When he shows up and demands Lily leave with him, Lily refuses and he slaps her. T Ray becomes very violent with Lily, grabbing her, calling her Deborah and yelling at her about leaving him. It isn’t until Lily screams “daddy!” that T Ray stops attacking her. T Ray confesses that Lily looks almost identical to her mother, that they share a lot of personality traits and when he finds that she ran away to the same place Deborah had, he was instantly reminded of Deborah and all his emotions came flowing back to him. Finally Lily understands why her father is so bitter, “But seeing him now, I knew he’d loved Deborah Fontanel, and when she’d left him, he’d sunk into bitterness.” (Kidd 293) T Ray has never forgiven Deborah for leaving him. Forgiving her was so hard for him because Lily looked so much like her that she was a constant reminder of his wife who left him. T Ray was hurt by Deborah so he took his anger out on the closest thing to her