Lily ending up at her mother’s previous home was so unlikely, nearly impossible. In the real world, Lily would not have been accepted into their home so easily either. In conclusion, some parts of “The Secret Life of Bees” probably would not occur in the real
Bees hide an entire colony within their hives, they hide little cities and communities. The book, The Secret Life of Bees, shows a lot of symbolism that relates to bees. In this book, written by Sue Monk Kidd, a 14-year-old named Lily Owens has memories of pulling the trigger on her own mother as a child. Her abusive father who goes by T-Ray makes her life miserable. Lily runs away with her caretaker Rosaleen to the Boatwright sisters, whom live on a honey farm.
Many people think bees live a vague life compared to humans. However, Albert Einstein once said “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” This quote illustrates how bees and humans live a similar life, each having their own set of tasks to accomplish. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd uses bees as a metaphor for Lily’s life.
The book “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd is a book about a fourteen-year-old white girl named Lily Owens who lives on a peach farm in Sylvan, South Carolina with her father T. Ray who is abusive and neglectful. Lily lives with a secret that many people do not know about, she believes she shot and killed, Deborah, her mother when she was just four years old. This memory has been haunting her for many years, and she would like to learn more about her mother. Ever since Deborah passed away, Rosaleen, Lily’s nanny, has been taking care of her. When the Civil Rights Act was signed, Rosaleen decided she would go and register to vote.
In Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, the author alludes to a bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham to emphasize the terror that multiple characters, such as May, felt. In the novel, August clarifies the meaning of the wailing wall to Lily with one of the events that caused May’s sadness, “Birmingham, Sept 15, four little angels dead” (98). To further explain, the church in Birmingham had a large African-American congregation and served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Therefore, the Ku Klux Klan felt intimidated, so on September 15, they bombed the church and killed four little girls. So with the result of that, the Ku Klux Klan members hoped to scare African-Americans from trying to earn their civil rights.
Bees are a mysterious species who have an incredible life that we know nothing about; in connection we live crazy, mysterious, lives with ups and downs; goods and bads. The secret life of bees by Sue Monk Kidd is an extraordinary story about a teenager Lily Owens, her abusive father, her mother, and numerous friends. Lily lost her mother at a young age, so she runs away; she ends up living with a loving family of women and finds mothers within them. She learns about friendships, overcoming, forgiveness, and love. In The secret Life of Bees the author shows theme through conflict and symbolism.
The Secret Life Of Bees, is the first novel of Sue Monk Kidd and it received many awards such as the 2002 Orange Prize in England. This novel was adapted for the stage as well as for the screen. It won the People's choice Award and the NAACP image award for the best picture,2008.(suemonkkidd.com) This realistic fiction novel takes place in rural South Carolina in 1964. A motherless Lily lives with her abusive father and wants to know about her mother’s life.
When living in a small town, there is often a strong sense of community. It feels as if everyone knows everything about everyone. Stories change things that may not be true. When trying to find the truth, there are lies that can be blended in. In Sue Monk Kidd's novel, The Secret Life of Bees, the motif of family history is utilized to characterize the setting as tradition and collective memory, while also shaping the character of Lily Owens as she navigates her identity within the community.
T Ray becomes very violent with Lily, grabbing her, calling her Deborah and yelling at her about leaving him. It isn’t until Lily screams “daddy!” that T Ray stops attacking her. T Ray confesses that Lily looks almost identical to her mother, that they share a lot of personality traits and when he finds that she ran away to the same place Deborah had, he was instantly reminded of Deborah and all his emotions came flowing back to him. Finally Lily understands why her father is so bitter, “But seeing him now, I knew he’d loved Deborah Fontanel, and
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.
In the 1960s, segregation and discrimination against African Americans were all over the south. African Americans had little to no rights or justice. The novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, is about a young white girl, Lily, who lives in Sylvan, South Carolina, with her abusive father T.Ray and her African American housekeeper, Rosaleen. Lily also had lost her mother when she was four years old. The song “The Times Are A-Changin’” written by Bob Dylan, shows that the everything is changing.
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.
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
However, she of course eventually had to tell August all about who she really was and what she was actually doing there, so she did. August had already known all about it and how she was Deborah’s daughter. Lily found out a lot about her mom and found out that T.Ray had ended up being right, her mom did leave her. Though, not everything T.Ray said was right. The day Lily shot her mother, she was not coming back just to get her things and leave again like T.Ray said, she was also coming back for Lily.
“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.
