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The Secret Life Of Bees Book Report

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During the summer of 2016, I read a book that I would least expect to be meaningful to me. I read the novel as a book project that was one of the requirements to be admitted into my ninth grade honors class. It wasn’t the usually genre of book I preferred, so when I started reading I was surprised to find myself so engrossed in the book. Though I had the whole summer to read the book, I couldn’t help but read it all in the first couple days of summer break.The book captivated me with it’s strong messages that related to struggles I was dealing with at the time. The book was The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. As I read it, I could connect with and feel the characters emotions and grief while they dealt with prejudice and female rights. …show more content…

Lily’s father is disrespectful to women and belittles her and other women throughout the entire book. Since she didn’t grow up with a mother,only her undermining father, Lily doesn’t realize her true value and capabilities she has. To help her Lily is guided by many strong women throughout the book that help her realize her true potential. One is a English teacher, who encourages her to become a teacher as well, which is a stronger profession then what Lily thought she was capable of. August Boatwright is one of her biggest role models. August is a powerful women for her time, she is an African American woman with a self owned honey business, which was very uncommon in this time period. She is also happens to be extremely intelligent, educated, and intellectual. Finally she shows Lily a life without men or marriage. August chooses to not get married to her love because she loves her freedom from a man’s authority more. Lily had never imagined or considered any of August’s achievements possible before and has a new view of the strength and power a woman can have. That’s only women Lily found encouragement by, she also had a spiritual role models, which were Black Mary and the Daughters of Mary. They show Lily what it means to be a powerful woman. They do this by showing how women can stick together and help each other, which Lily was used to being put down and bullied by other girls from school. The Daughters of Mary are always there for each other and stand together during rough times, and show her the beauty of female empowerment. After Lily realizes her value as a woman, she implements all she learned to better herself. She had a new sense of pride and confidence, and even pursues her dream career as a

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At the Boatright house, the bees and their hives are both a way of life and a means of sustenance for the family. But the Boatrights also respect the bees and care for them because they realize all of nature is in harmony with mankind when treated this way. August uses the bees and their hives to illustrate to Lily how societies operate, explaining that they are a powerful symbol of women as leaders of the village. August explains to Lily that bees have secret lives, so much so that humans seldom realize how complicated a beehive is. Lily sees the parallel between the bees and her own secret life.

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Lily brought a chick home and it made a mess, T.ray threatened to boil the chick but Rosaleen saved it. Rosaleen was the only one defending Lily in her younger years and was always protecting her from T.R.A. Rosaleen was always there for Lily when no one else was. Even with Rosaleen helping Lily in her younger years, August filled the same role at the house, and even made a bigger impact on her for the short time she was in her life compared to Rosaleen. August taught Lily how to be a beekeeper while teaching her many life lessons, she was also the one to tell her about her mom and had a bigger role in that part of the book compared to

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The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a novel about race, faith, and growing up in the American South in the 1960s. The story follows Lily Owens, a 14-year-old girl from Sylvan, South Carolina, and her struggles with not only struggles with the usual hardships associated with growing up, but also an abusive father and a dead mother. After being pushed to the limit by her father, she runs away from home with her “stand-in mother” to the town of Tiburon, South Carolina, having seen it on the back of an image of a honey label her real mother had owned. She is taken in by the eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters and is immersed into their world of bees, honey, and the Black Mary. Through Lily’s interactions with the sisters and her

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Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart—now, that matters. The whole problem with people is—” (213-214). Overall, August has many reasons for the growth and development of Lily Owen, including the fact that August opened up her home to her, providing care and support for her.

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Lily’s mother is the cause of much of her grief, through her journey she imagines her mother in a way that does not accurately depict who her mother truly was. When she finds out what her mother actually was she, “I stood

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She always stands up for what she believes in and she doesn’t let people get in the way of her finding more about her mom. In the story each event shows another way that lily is showing courage and kindness. For example when Lily said no she wasn’t going to go back with her dad to Sylvan and when she helped Zach do all the beekeeping

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After some time with the Boatwrights, Lily starts to become a part of their community, joining their religion. She has found a new family and love. With August, she experiences the love of a mother she had craved. Finally, she is accepted by June and feels this is the place she truly belongs. She has found a purpose in these people and is helping

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I think that it would be very uncharacteristic for a white girl raised by a parent with almost no moral compass to end up living in a house of black women. By doing this Lily took the stand against the societal norms and showed that she saw no difference between her and her new family. Lily took the difficult path and went against much of what she saw in society and did the opposite by living with people of the opposite race. I think that Lily was an exception and the main reason that she went against the common beliefs of society at that time was she was lonely.

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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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Other than a desire for freedom and a journey to reach maturity, Lily and the bees both also show a strong need to be loved. The novel explicitly states that the bees need to be sent love. But, although August directs this towards the bees initially, she intends to say that everything needs love. She says, “Above all, send the bees love.

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The Secret life of Bees by Sue Monn Kidd explores different points of views about racism during the Civil Rights movement (desegregation). This is done by showing how racism affects men, women, and children of color. Three characters in the novel that learn about racism are Lily, Zach, and June Lily arrives at the Boatwright household to be the only white person in a house of 4 African American women. Even though she has been around a black woman she still has racism deep inside her but eventually learns from it. Through her experiences, she comes to learn how racism can separate her from the people she loves.

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Throughout the novel, Lily is only able to depend on herself and her own strength to get through difficult

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The House of Mirth Society identified a person based on their economical stability during the early nineteenth hundredths. But for women, money was their way of being known or recognized since women were not acknowledged at this time. In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton includes the character of Lily Bart as determined in finding a wealthy husband in order to portray how during the nineteenth hundredths, a woman's main interest is how the economic stability drives their marriage status. For many women, marrying a wealthy man was their way to escape the poverty and receive what they always wanted. Social class plays a big role with the main character Lily when she believes that her main goal is to marry a wealthy man.

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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 our class discussion we brought up how the early twentieth century was around the time the transition from the true woman to the new woman was happening. True women were the ones that valued marriage, spending most of their days at home taking care of the house and worrying about the kids. They didn’t really delve into politics or men’s affairs. The new women were starting to get jobs besides taking care of children, seen in public more, trying to have a voice politically, and it was common for them to not be married. I think Lily is ahead of her time and not comfortable with the fact that she wants to be a new woman.

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