Sue Monk Kidd

Life is filled with challenges and conflict. However only a few can overcome and escape the confinements of their problems, others remain left behind to struggle. Sue Monk Kidd displays this with the imprisonment that Lily deals with throughout the book. While Lily does finds liberation at the end, she first has to break free from the imprisonments of her lies, T-Ray, and her torment from her mother. Throughout the book, one of the major conflicts that Lily has to face is her secrets. With her life controlled through them, her secrets and lies refrain her from living fulfillingly and puts a mental strain on her. It all started with a simple lie to a store clerk at Tiburon, “I’m visiting my grandmother” (62). Soon that simple lie escalated

But with her mother dead and her father bitter, those feelings are foreign to Lily. Especially since she is trapped, tormenting herself over the fact that she was the one to shoot her mother. Despite it being a terrible accident. Sue Monk Kidd expresses to the readers how much death can trap someone in their own mind through Lily. You can see the full extent of her suffering when she sobbed the truth to August “It was my fault she died. I killed her” (241) and when she torments herself with thinking that she is unlovable. Lily even describes that her words had “broke open her heart” (242). This shows how captive Lily is over her mother because, despite loving her life at the Boatwright’s house, she can still move past the death. Lily’s suffering increase after finding out that her mother had willingly left her behind with T-Ray and begins to question why? It even makes her thoughts sink deeper into depression,“it was easy for her to leave me, because she never wanted me in the first place” (252). Nevertheless, Lily was able to prevail her mental incarceration and come to terms with her mother’s death. With accepting who her mother was and what had happened, Lily was able to move forward with her life at the Boatwright’s house.

Throughout The Secret Life Of Bees, Lily struggles to find how to live life freely, like many people do. She is constantly restrained by her problems. The lies and secrets that she