Symbolism In The Secret Life Of Bees

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. The first major example of Kidd using bees as a symbol is within the first epigram found before chapter one: “The queen… if she is removed from the hive the workers very quickly sense her absence… they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness (1).” This epigram explains how worker bees feel lost or unnecessary when they lack a queen. How this symbolizes an experience related to Lily is how she also feels the same way after losing her “queen”, or her mother

The main example in which Kidd used throughout The Secret Life of Bees novel was with the symbolism of Lily by bees. When this book was written its purpose was to represent racism within the US around the civil rights movement. But racism is really just taking two different parties which appear different but are equally smart, can perform the same tasks, and are emotionally equal, Caucasians and African Americans. So the real importance of the way Kidd uses bees as a symbol within the novel is to understand what Kidd is representing at a larger scale, not just within the story itself, racism present within the