Lily was raised being unknowingly racist while being abused by her father, T. Ray. Readers can conclude that Lily’s father has cruel ways to punish Lily, an example is, “I’d been kneeling on grits since I was six, but I still never got used to that powdered glass feeling beneath my skin” (24). Being raised in one of the most racist towns in South Carolina, Sylvan, Lily, like every other child living in South Carolina, was born into racism. Lily has never had a problem with black people, but feels like she sticks out while she was at the Boatwright sister’s house, “Staying in a colored house with colored women, eating off their dishes, lying on their sheets-it was not something I was against, but I was brand new to it, and my skin never felt …show more content…
As stated in the first paragraph, Lily and Rosaleen do run away in the near beginning of the book. It all started when Rosaleen went to register to vote and decided to take Lily with her. Rosaleen soon picks a fight with a racist white man but what really sets the man off is that Rosaleen spilled her “snuff jug” all over the two white mens shoes. She soon got thrown in jail and after Lily visits Rosaleen, she gets in a rough encounter with T. Ray. Lily decides to break Rosaleen out of jail and run away to anywhere that is not Sylvan, South Carolina. The whole journey was new and interesting to Lily, she says this quote that shows her realization that everyone has pain, but not everyone can see it, “I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don’t even know it” (63) After seeing honey containers with the Black Mary logo on them, Lily asks the cashier about them and finds out vital information regarding where Lily and Rosaleen could go and possibly live. The duo soon gets to their destination; a bright pink house occupied by the August, May, and June, also known as the Boatwright/calendar …show more content…
August and May welcome them with open arms while June takes more time to open up to them. August really shows her kindness when she allows Lily and Rosaleen to stay as long as they want and shows them how to take care of bees and gather the honey from them. Month pass by and the Boatwright sisters become almost like family to Lily and that is all she was really looking for. At the beginning of the novel, Lily was broken down and thought that life was going to always be bad. After meeting the calendar sisters and Zach, Lily was happy and now knows there’s more to life than sorrow and unhappiness.
What made Lily change was the kind of people she was with and how they treated her. Back at Sylvan, the only people she ever talked to were T. Ray and the boys and girls at her school and they all treated her badly. Having to grow up with that kind of influence, she would think that everyone was like that, which is not true, but she wouldn’t know that. When she met August, May, and June, they treated her with something Lily has never felt before, love. They treated her like one of their own and eventually Lily does become one of them.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a novel with a lot of different messages but a really important one is that if you ever find yourself in a place where you are unhappy, you should do whatever you have to do to be