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. It is evident that bees serve as a symbol in Lily’s life due to the guidance and comfort they provide Lily, the roles they both serve, and feelings such as loss Lily and the bees both experience. Humans need the same necessities as bees in order not to …show more content…
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. Males are reared only at time of year when their presence I required.” (Kidd 67) This quote demonstrates a metaphor that bees have different jobs. In Lily’s case she also has a job, which is working for August to collect honey from the bee yard. As stated, the queen bee has daughters called workers. Throughout the novel Lily is similar to the ‘workers’ by being a daughter figure of August and having the job of a bee hive worker. In chapter five, when collecting honey for the first time, August told Lily about bee yard etiquette before collecting honey. “I hadn’t been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called bee yard etiquette. She reminded me that the world was really one big bee yard, and the same rules worked in both places...” (Kidd 92) As August states bees live a similar world to humans by following the same rules. This