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The Secret Life Of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd

773 Words4 Pages

Imagine living your life with an abusive dad and without a mother because you killed her. This is what Lily had to live through as when she was a little kid her mother died and whenever she would ask her father he would say she shot her. In “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily is a 14 year old girl whose mother is dead and has a good mother figure named Rosaleen and a racist abusive dad named T-ray. August Boatwright has had the most influence on Lily’s life because when Lily was going through a lot of emotional problems like her thinking she was unlovable, August helped her think otherwise and other things like helping her go to school. August also convinced T-Ray to let Lily stay with them. August Influences Lily by letting her and Rosaleen live under the house and helping Lily go back to school. …show more content…

We can't have you living on the side of the road," said August.” This means August influenced Lily by giving her and Rosaleen a place to stay and not letting them live on the road. “She later on helped Lily go to school and Rosaleen the ability to vote.” This proves how much of a good influence August is on Lily because Lily stopped going to school for a while and August helped her go back and she even helped Rosaleen in the process which could make Lily feel better. Overall, this shows how August has helped Lily by giving her a place to stay until she is ready to move and helping Lily go to school. August has also had a good influence on Lily by convincing T-Ray to let Lily stay and helping Lily think she's lovable. Lily can have a home here for as long as she wants." Mr. Owens, you would be doing Lily and the rest of us a favor by leaving her here. I made her my apprentice beekeeper, and she's learning the whole business and helping us out with all her hard work”. Monk Kidd

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It doesn’t take a wizard to see Zach loves you. And every one of the Daughters loves you” (Kidd 242). August makes Lily feel better and clears her conscience about her mother. Later in the story, Lily gets confirmation she did kill her mother from T-Ray, but, because August talked to Lily, she was not completely distraught. In conclusion, August impacts Lily in a good way and helps her with her mom.

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Lily’s nanny is also very loving towards her. She buys Lily a bunny for Easter and when T. Ray tries to take it away and threatens to fire Rosaleen, she stands up to him in order to keep her child happy. Lily says that was the first time she really knew that Rosaleen loved her. Rosaleen is a very strong woman and Lily follows her example. When Lily’s friend, Zach, starts school at the white high school, students throw things at them because he is black but she stays by his side and does not run away.

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As a result, Lily’s thoughts mirror the same role and purpose in life. In chapter four, Lily is getting comfortable living in the Boatwright house and August tells Lily what she has to contribute to the house, in order to stay. The epigraph from chapter four states, “Honeybees are social insects and live in colonies. Each colony is a family unit, comprising a single egg-laying female or queen and her many sterile daughters, called workers. The workers cooperates in the food-gathering, nest–building and rearing the off–spring.

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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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At the beginning of the novel, Lily is a very flat character - we don't get to see the full potential Lily has to offer. A shift in the story is shown whenever Lily accompanies Rosaleen to sign up to vote. Thus far, we don't get to see Lily shine as a true round character. After Rosaleen gets thrown into jail we see Lily breakaway from her usual self and starts to really become resourceful. She schemes about how to break Rosaleen out; she plans their route away from Sylvan in search of Black Mary, and her mother.

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August took her to meet May and June and learn about different perspectives on their lives. The four people give Lily's life a new perspective and teach her how to be a better person by finding new people who will give her a chance. August embodies leadership and independence by providing Lily with guidance and support. The main figure in the Boatwright household teaches Lily life lessons. "Well, if you have a queen and a group of independent-minded bees that split off from the rest of the hive and look for another place to live, then you’ve got a swarm.”

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She has grown up without a maternal figure and only a callous father who abuses her. Therefore, she has never grown up to be the woman she was meant to be. In the middle of Chapter One, Lily demonstrates her immaturity by needing to somehow prove that bees were in her room when T-Ray doesn’t believe her. When Rosaleen, the African American worker in T-Ray’s house, is arrested because she stood up for herself when racist white men fought with her when she tried to vote.

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The story states, “Lily can have a home here for as long as she wants," August said”(Monk Kidd 427). This shows August telling T-Ray, Lily’s dad, that she can live with her for however long she wants. This also shows that August gave Lily a home when she didn’t want to go live with her abusive dad. August gave Lily support and a place to live. This shows that August had the most impact on Lily’s growth and development because without August, Lily would be homeless.

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And I took her away. ”(Kidd 8) Lily has had a rough start to her life with her father being abusive and neglecting to her and not to mention her shooting and killing her mom on accident. Lily had lost so much, but gained a great deal of parental figures when she and Rosaleen escape off to Tiburon. There they find August Boatwright and Lily’s life changes.

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Over the course of the story Lily begins to acknowledge her own biases, such as when she is surprised that “August is so intelligent, so cultured,” and admits that this is a sign she still has some “prejudice buried inside” (Bees 103). These admissions are proof of her character growth, showing that Lily is growing to understand the problems around her and in herself, something that we would lose most if not all through an alternate

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In the beginning of the book, June Boatwright, August’s sister, is very hostile towards Lily, partially because of her race and also because of her distaste of Lily’s mother, the latter of which is learned later in the novel. In one scene, for example, June and Lily have a trivial fight over a house, stemming from months of built-up resentment. When they realize the pettiness of their entire quarrel, they give up on the fight, an unspoken agreement to end their rivalry. They fall back into the grass, making depressions in the earth. Lily says, “I stepped over them with the utmost care, and, seeing how careful I was, June stepped over them, too, and then, to my shock, she hugged me” (170).

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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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593 Words | 3 Pages

Ray, her father, shows up to August’s house to bring Lily home at the end of the book. All hope seems lost for her, and she believes that her new life is over and must return to her old life of sadness. August, however, talks T. Ray into leaving Lily with her and her sisters. Lily realizes that she truly is loved, and sees that she now has a new queen, and at the same time a new mother. Her life has become something beautiful.

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At first, Lily faced discrimination from June, August's younger sister. Through this, Kidd stresses that prejudice is not always one-way. In the 1960s, and today, people developed grudges against each other based on race. June's position towards the beginning of Lily's stay is best described as hostile, but with time, she comes to accept Lily and apologizes for her behavior. Although at this point in the novel Lily didn't fight to do something about the racism around her, she soon developed into a more active person, one who tried to demonstrate

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Two of her sisters have this problem and it has genuinely affected August for better or worse. Lily’s father, T-Ray, deals with his mental illness by using violence and taking his anger out on Lily because of what happened with his wife Deborah. This causes Lily to feel unloved by her father. In the beginning of the story, Lily runs away from home to escape her tragic life with T. Ray.

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