Lastly, August gives Lily a new perspective on Deborah, her mother. When Lily encounters the three sisters, she lies about who she is out of fear that they would know her mother. One of the sisters, May, confirms this when Lily asks if she knew Deborah. Later on in the story, August has a talk with Lily and reveals that she knows who Lily is. Lily finds out that Deborah did run away, and Lily becomes angry.
Sue Monk Kidd presents Lily’s insecure personality in her novel The Secret Life of Bees to convince the audience to see Lily in an innocent light. Kidd desires to portray Lily as innocent to justify her running away from T. Ray and her home. An excerpt from the onset of the book reveals Lily’s insecurity: “There was nothing worse than clumps of whispering girls who got quiet when I passed. I started picking scabs off my body and, when I didn’t have any, gnawing the flesh around my fingernails till I was a bleeding wreck”(9). As one analyzes this portion of the book, Lily convinces herself that she does not care what the others think about her.
Through indirect characterization, Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, displays Rosaleen as an obstinate character in order to exhibit the southern racism at hand. For example, Rosaleen is indirectly characterized when she comes into contact with the town’s most notorious racist, Franklin Posey, and will not apologize for standing up for her beliefs. Recalling the event, she exclaims, “‘he hit me till the policeman said that was enough. They didn’t get no apology, though’” (46).
Journey and quests are known for traveling from one place to another. In other ways, a journey is known to have perspective on different types of emotions. It’s the process of changing and developing over a period of time throughout the characters in writing or storytelling. Most best-selling novels require some meaning of journey throughout the author’s writing. One of the best examples would be “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd.
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.
According to Dr. Gurian, dads who are involved in the lives of their daughter can impact their daughter’s self-esteem. T. Ray’s negative involvement in Lily’s life, his behavior makes Lily feel even guiltier and she turns into an introverted person; Lily becomes a non-confident girl due to lack of support from her father (who is the only parent that she has) unlike other children. She calls her father by name, not by saying
Lily returns home to take some things to Rosaleen when T-Ray informs her that her mother had left her as a child. Lily has worshipped her mother for her entire life, and she refuses to
Lastly, Lily finally builds up the courage to stand up to her father. She does this by saying, “I said I’m not leaving” (296). For Lily’s whole life, she was blamed for her mother’s death especially by her father. He is a terrible father to her because he mentally and physically abuses her, and makes her feel
Written in a way almost unique to other writers, Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees allows readers to escape into a world of love and comfort that can only be found within the Boatwright sisters and the Daughters of Mary. Representing a society of women that so differs from what Lily has previously known, having been surrounded by a culture with no regard for women and having hardly any understanding of her female potential, August and her circle open up Lily to a whole nother world of possibilities. Their doting on Lily, despite the racial divide, and lessons on the Black Mary fill in the maternal gap left by her own deceased mother, Deborah. It is because of her essential escape from Sylvan and T-Ray’s oppressive attitude, to the welcoming Boatwright clan, that Lily is able to make something new of herself and open
The Character I Admired “Secret Life of Bees,” a book written by Sue Monk Kidd is about a fourteen year old girl named Lily Owens that has her whole life flash before her eyes because of the blurred haunting memory of the afternoon her mother was killed when she was only four years old. I personally haven’t dealt with this, but I can only imagine how it feels to have your mother’s life be taken away because of an accidental action you decided to take. In this story, there are characters of different skin colors, different personalities, different beliefs and they all somehow come together to form an usual, but loving family. But because of this there are some characters more adored than others, if it’s because they lied, there personality is not nice, or they are abusive, each character has their own reasons behind why they act like they do. Even though many people’s favorite character in the “Secret Life of Bees” is Lily, the character I admired the most in this book was August because she was kind and understanding.
In the bildungsroman, a coming of age novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the mother figure theme is prevalent. The protagonist, Lily, has lost her mother and lives with T. Ray, her abusive father. Because she endures the cruelty of T. Ray, she is not satisfied with living without a mother. She has different motherly figures who embrace and love her: August Boatwright, Rosaleen, and Mother Mary were the figures that helped shape her and while they could not replace her mother, they certainly filled the “hole” in Lily’s life. August Boatwright, one of the Calendar sisters who cares for her younger sisters, helps Lily mature and teaches her acceptance for everyone hen Lily and her maid Rosaleen went to Tiburon, South Carolina in
In the novel Secret Life of Bees and today prejudice is shown for people’s sexual preference, age but especially race. Since Lily was little she has been told by T. Ray that white people are better and smarter than black people. In the story Lily tells the reader what T-Ray had told her,“T. Ray did not think colored women were smart.” (Kidd 78) “Staying in a colored house with colored women, eating off their dishes, lying on their sheets-it was not something I was against, but I was brand new to it, and my skin never felt so white to me.”
Her physical identity didn’t go through extreme change, but her mental view of it did. She wasn’t in a situation where she was capable of loving herself before she left, but later, she was, and it opened her up. Lily’s flower ‘bloomed’. She was able to be secure and confident in her physical appearance like she never was before, because of her newfound identity. ANother example of self-confidence and security as a result of finding identity is shown through the behavior of the bees, and the change in said behavior as Lily’s identity progresses.
"They 'll see how beutiful I am and be ashamed." (Hughes line 18) Both Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman talk of segregatoin in simlier and different ways. They both talk of the 1800 's era and slavery. They have different word form, rhythm and style however.
Being a single parent is never going to be easy, and it's going to be even harder knowing that your own child was the one that killed that special person, the one T.ray (Lily’s dad) “Claimed to love” Lily was just without boundaries because T ray always had rough punishments that worked her physically but not mentally that’s why Lily acted how she did. Even though lilly killed her own mom it wasn't a reason for T ray to treat lilly like that because lilly Is still his own blood, T ray didn’t treat deborah the way she deserved, T.Ray felt like he was looking at deborah when he’d seen lily.
