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Secret Life Of Bees Theme Analysis

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“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background or his religion. People learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite” once said Nelson Mandela, a philanthropist who was a former president of South Africa. Sending an idea that once a person is taught to hate, they will become “trained” to thinking that a person of color or a religion is nonsense and poor compared to themselves. In Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, racism is a major theme within the novel. The author successfully develops an idea through her writing that a person can learn to love where hate and negative preexposed opinions were taught, …show more content…

However, Lily loves Zach. With the author placing a final relationship status, Lily's love life. The book was written so that when Lily meets Zach some of Lily's acknowledged prejudice side to her has vanished. As Lily's views change so does the way the author describes a colored person. Changing words to describe Zach as handsome, smart, and hard working right when he is introduced. Lily realizes how wrong she was taught being, “shocked over him being handsome. At my school they made fun of colored people’s lips and noses. I myself had laughed at these jokes, hoping to fit in. Now I wished I could pen a letter to my school to be read at opening assembly that would tell them how wrong we’d all been” (pg 116). The closer the two grow the more comfortable Lily feels being seen hanging out with colored folks, despite the names she is called. Completely removing the idea of two races being different, instead they were the same. With it taking one girl to be surrounded by people of color she attains a love where it was doubted most. Pushing past the views of everyone else, and opening her heart to a world full of love rather than

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Lily's creativity, activated by religious observance, allows her to be more creative. Later on in the passage, when Lily describes her outward expression, she notes that “[She] wanted to cry, but in the next instant, [she] wanted to laugh” (Kidd 71). Through the use of juxtaposition, Kidd carries out an image of Lily about to sob until she suddenly starts chuckling. By using the diction of “cry” and “laugh,” two words that completely differ in emotion, Kidd shows that the religious statue made her recall events of her past, truly making her analyze the type of person she was. Religion allowed her to have the trait of being self-aware allowing her to forgive herself for her past and move on because she knew that the religious statue could see good in her.

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Bees hide an entire colony within their hives, they hide little cities and communities. The book, The Secret Life of Bees, shows a lot of symbolism that relates to bees. In this book, written by Sue Monk Kidd, a 14-year-old named Lily Owens has memories of pulling the trigger on her own mother as a child. Her abusive father who goes by T-Ray makes her life miserable. Lily runs away with her caretaker Rosaleen to the Boatwright sisters, whom live on a honey farm.

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Lily has a coming of age moment when she realizes she is loved. “You are unlovable, Lily Owens. Unlovable. Who could love you? Who in this world could ever love you?”(Kidd 242).

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Things never stay the same for too long and we, as humans, are constantly faced with changes coming from each direction. No matter how hard we try, changes will never stop barreling towards us and continue to force us to constrain to the new paths of life we must take. There are stop signs or breaks in life and we feel the impact of these changes constantly. These life changes plays a large role in Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees. Water plays a large role in Kidd’s novel during many different parts of the story.

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1796 Words | 8 Pages

Chapter 1 The five aspects of a quest are: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there. A book that uses the aspects of a quest very nicely is the secret life of bees. (a) The quester in this story is a young girl named lily owens who fights with her father and does not have a mother because lily accidently shot her when she younger.

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Racism is a horrible thing, People get called names, get excluded from activities, and get treated like they are dirt just because of the color of their skin. In the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd there endless accounts of senselessness and absurdity of racism to the black community. These accounts happen in the Beginning (Ch. 1-4), Middle (Ch. 5-9), and End (Ch. 10-14) of the book. So basically the whole book is full of racism. Below will show how white people will judge a book by its cover, and not take the time to read it like Lily.

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“The gun on the floor. Bending to pick it up. The noise that exploded around us. This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted.

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The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a novel about a girl named Lily who runs away with her stand-in mother Rosaleen, to Tiburon, South Carolina. There they meet three sisters named August, June, and May. August teaches Lily many things. One being the power of female community, which Lily didn’t have growing up. When Lily was little, she shot her mother by accident. She narrates that since she didn’t have a mother growing up, she missed out on all the female aspects of life that she should have learned.

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Throughout The Secret Life of Bees bees play a recurring role in the novel, repeatably being mentioned during the novel in epigrams before the start of each chapter and within the story itself. Unfortunately, on certain occasions the reason why bees are included in a certain part of the story can be unclear and confusing to readers, causing them to occasionally misinterpret the importance of bees throughout the novel. Regardless, the bees throughout play a very important role in understanding many of the themes and symbolism that Kidd included within the novel. In The Secret Life of Bees Kidd symbolizes Lily’s experiences and situations through the bees frequently present in the novel to show that seemingly different things can function in the same way.

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She expressed, how she felt about her skin, and provided great reason for how she viewed herself for being colored. She spoke of her ancestors and how they paid the price for her civilization; so therefore, she doesn’t have to feel less of a person because of her skin color. She even mentions a time where she forgets that she was a person o colored until she thrown against the background of white; meaning she sees no color until she is constantly reminded. The author shows core values by being happy in the skin she is in.

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Continuing, another theme that led us through Lily’s adventure of growing up was her discovering how important storytelling was. She was going through gruesome horrid things, and when she read things like Shakespeare she realized how important it was because it helped her escape to a fantasy world for a little bit of time. Lastly, Lily learns the power of the female community. Lily grew up without a mother, so for a large chunk of her life she didn’t know the real power the female community held.

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“The Most Dangerous Game” I read the short story, “The Most Dangerous Game”, by Richard Connell. It is about a man named Rainsford who was on a boat and fell off. He swam to a nearby island and landed on the shore. He went exploring and discovered a mansion where a Cossack named Zaroff lived. There were hunters and huntees in the story.

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When Lily lost her mother and has T. Ray taking care of her, she starts questioning her mother of why she left them. “Your sorry mother ran off and left you. The day she died, she’d come back to get her things, that’s all,” (Kidd, 40). When Lily heard T. Ray say this to her, she was shocked with depression and thinking that T. Ray might of lied to her about what he said about her mother. The lesson is that Lily is depressed and questioning herself on why her mother decided to leave her.

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“A wonderful novel about mothers and daughters and the transcendent power of love” (Connie May Fowler). This quote reflects the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd because the protagonist in the story, Lily Owens, her mother have died when she was four years old and she didn’t feel loved by her abusive father, T. Ray Owens, until she met the Boatwrights family with the housekeeper, Rosaleen, and stayed with them. The Boatwrights family are the three black sisters who are August, May, and June. This novel took place in Sylvan and Tiburon, South Carolina, where Lily grew up and where she found the answer to her questions.

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In my personal life, it was easy to build up a bubble. I have faced much adversity and hardships during my childhood. During that time, building up a barrier around me was the only way I knew of defending myself mentally, emotionally, and physically. As such, it took a lot of work to develop new ways of dealing with conflict. Through much self evaluation and continued guidance by the role models in my life, I found a sustainable way of breaking through my own bubble.

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