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The Secret Life Of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd

1005 Words5 Pages

In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, bees are a recurring image in the story and epigraphs that provides guidance for Lily and symbolizes the important lessons she learns as well as her search for a mother. Throughout the book, Lily uses bees to guide her choices when she lacks a sense of direction. At the beginning of the novel, Lily is upset with her father and unsure what to do. She collects bees in a jar and decides to let them free, however when she unscrews the cap they do not escape though they easily can. She remarks that “the bees remained there, like planes on a runway not knowing they’d been cleared for takeoff...I tapped the glass, even laid the jar on its side, but those crazy bees stayed put” (28). Lily believes the bees …show more content…

Soon after moving in with the Calendar Sisters, Lily realizes the strength and power of women. The structure of the pink house is similar to one of a beehive. In a hive, “males are reared only at the times of year when their presence is required” (67). Similarly, the Calendar Sisters’ home is ran by women and thrives without the help of men. By living with examples of strong female leaders, Lily learns the true strength of women which ultimately helps her find the courage to stand up to T.Ray and thrive without his fathering. Lily also learns the important concept of communication, one of the necessary characteristics of bees. For a long time, Lily lacks the courage to ask June, August, or May about her mother. However, after seeing May use graham crackers to lure cockroaches out of the house, something her mother did, Lily finally decides it is time to confront May. By asking May about her mother, Lily finally receives the confirmation that her mother did know the calendar sisters. Similar to bees, Lily’s world “depends on communication– on an innate ability to send and receive messages” (165). She finally learns her lesson and uses this “innate ability”, and because of that discovers the answer to the question she was wondering for a long time. While Lily becomes older, she learns important values that help her mature which symbolize and serve as a parallel to the lessons of

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230 Words | 1 Pages

In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily’s journey is related to our school motto: “Monstra Matrem: Show Thyself a Mother” because she was looking for a mother’s love. Specifically, the motto describes a request for maternal care and to live in the spirit of caring. For example, Lily describes her daydreams when she says, “I used to have daydreams in which she was white and married T. Ray, and became my real mother.” (Kidd 12). This quote shows how Lily wishes Rosaleen was her legal mother since she was the only female figure in Lily’s life at the time.

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596 Words | 3 Pages

The Character of Lily Melissa Owens in Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees The novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd tells a story about a 14-year old Lily Melissa Owens. Lily is a white girl growing up in 1964 South Carolina in the midst of a period of segregation. When first introduced into the novel, the reader learns all of the troubles of Lily's life - being abused and mistreated by her father, being treated as if she wasn't a little girl, and being left with the burden of killing her mother. After running away from her father with Rosaleen, her black nanny, Lily comes to realize qualities about herself she had never noticed.

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1081 Words | 5 Pages

3. Explore how Hurston uses elements of nature as a metaphor for Janie's life. 
 Hurston shames us immodestly with grotesque glimpses of our protagonist, Janie, whose life delicates through painful metaphors within the terrestrial veils of her world. They flutter and furiate like a beating heart, gasping in the polluted industry of sentience. In Their Eyes Were Watching God this chivalry of language erotosizes the ideas that human existence can translate into forms of seemingly ethereal aesthetics.

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441 Words | 2 Pages

Rosaleen, her caretaker, is arrested, which Lily responds to by breaking her out of jail. To avoid being caught or returning to home, Lily and Rosaleen leave town, escaping the ‘jar’. The symbol of the bees has a huge impact on the story and, in ways, foreshadows her capture, and guides Lily. Even though the Boatwright sisters are not family, they love Lily, and introduce her to the bees. The moment when Lily is introduced to beekeeping, “...you can help me and Zach with the bees.”

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484 Words | 2 Pages

Chrysanthemums are beautiful, delicate flowers, which often symbolize happiness. In the short story, “The Chrysanthemums,” John Steinbeck walks the readers through the lives of Elisa and Henry Allen. They live on a foothill ranch in Salinas Valley, California, where they spend most of their days living a simple lifestyle. The Allens focus their time on maintaining their ranch, but in the eyes of Elisa, this meant more time for her to tend to her beloved chrysanthemums. Steinbeck incorporates quizzical diction and repetition to characterize Elisa and to define happiness, to convey the message that it is more important to be happy than to try to please everybody else.

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567 Words | 3 Pages

In chapter 8, Lily calls her father T-Ray to see if he knows her favorite color. By doing this, she can see if he truly loves her. The quote shared at the beginning of the chapter talks about how bees depend on strong contact with their colony. “Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require its social companionship and support - The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men,” (Kidd 114). In this chapter, Lily gains the courage to talk to T-Ray, so she calls him.

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926 Words | 4 Pages

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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1401 Words | 6 Pages

The Secret Lives of People The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, is an interesting story that connects human lives to bees. The story takes place in 1964 during the Civil Rights Movement and fourteen year-old Lily Owens leaves her abusive father and her home in Sylvan, South Carolina to go to Tiburon with hopes to find information on her mother. Throughout the story, Lily struggles with many internal conflicts and also meets several mother figures along the way.

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1170 Words | 5 Pages

Female comradery is one of the strongest connections any group of women can have with one another. In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens is a fourteen-year-old girl living on the outskirts of Sylvan, South Carolina in 1964. Her mother is not in her life, as she has been accidentally shot by Lily when Lily was just four years old. She lives with her abusive father, T-Ray, who is still mourning the loss of his wife, Deborah, and his feelings and own issues carry over to how he treats Lily. He verbally and physically abuses her, shouting at her or making her kneel on grits until her knees swell up.

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1271 Words | 6 Pages

Violence in literature reflects reality while offering a productive and secure place to explore difficult questions. The Secret Life of Bees is an astonishing and endearing novel about prejudice, appreciation, and acceptance of a young girl named Lily and her nanny during the early 60's Civil Rights era. Each character in the novel reveals how the American south forcibly came out of the 'separated but equal' middle ages, the struggle surrounding slavery and the attempts at abolition. In the past, many people has challenged this book due to violence, profanity, and radical discrimination. Others have decided to qualify it because they believe that violence has played a great role in history and that it is essential to learn from it.

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302 Words | 2 Pages

In the Bildungsroman, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily, the young motherless protagonist, exists in a life which lacks love and care, but with an act of rebellion, alters the entire course of her life. After enduring cruel punishments from a sadist father, Lily accepts this as the way of life she must live. However, after a crucial moment, Lily begins to consider the idea of freedom from her oppressive life; she realizes this when she and Rosaleen, her substitute mother, come under arrest for disrupting the public and Terrence, her father, would only take Lily out of jail. This is a pivotal moment as Lily a heated conversation with her father and exclaims, “You don’t scare me”(Kidd 38). Her brash action to rebel against her father

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894 Words | 4 Pages

From Miss Maudie’s near perfect garden to Mayella’s vibrant red geraniums among a landfill of trash, flowers are a large symbolic presence throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Some might think that the flowers are merely a coincidence to the plot, but I believe that there’s a further significance to them. In particular, Ms. Maudie, Mayella, and Mrs. Dubose all are characterized in part by the flowers that they grow. The flowers unite these characters in the fact that they all highlight feminine qualities of their personalities. Some may say the flowers are nothing more then a plot device, but the flowers throughout the book showcase aspects of femininity in each character they’re associated with.

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1410 Words | 6 Pages

Symbolism can be defined as the use of symbols that an author uses to suggest more than the literal meaning of the object .Symbolism often allows the reader to understand the text better and connect with the story on a different level. In The Handmaid’s Tale, symbolism can be seen in various parts of the novel. One of the most common type of symbolism that can be identified in the text is through the use of colours. One of the most obvious symbols in the novel is the uniform that every Handmaid is supposed to wear.

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983 Words | 4 Pages

“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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803 Words | 4 Pages

The peak of The Secret Life of Bees happens in Chapter Fourteen when Lily goes up against T. Beam in the pink house. All through the novel, Lily has been battling with who she is in connection to her mom 's passing. At the end of the day, Lily is experiencing issues choosing what sort of lady she needs to be without the bearing of a mother. As proposed in different epigraphs, Lily is meandering illogically like a honey bee without a ruler. At the point when Lily goes up against T. Beam she settles on the choice not to live with him anymore.

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