ipl-logo

The Secret Life Of Bees Character Analysis

504 Words3 Pages
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
Show More
Related
1115 Words | 5 Pages

Kingsolver uses Bees in the novel Pigs In Heavens as a symbol of sweetness and love. In the sense that bees collect naturally sweet nectar in which they then create sweet honey. Honey is so admissible in the scent of the bears that they can smell the sweet fragrance up to two miles away. Kingsolver establishes a theme of love within Cash and Alice.

Read More
481 Words | 2 Pages

One of the themes presented by Sue Monk Kidd in, “The Secret Life of Bees” is pushing boundaries. In the book, Lily runs away from her abusive father and stays at a beekeepers house where she would be safe. This beekeepers house is a black family and while she stayed there and everyone was constantly pushing boundaries. The story relates to the article written by Nadra Kareem Nittle which was called, “How the Freedom Riders Movement Began”. This article was about a group of people called freedom riders traveling together to end the Jim Crow laws or other known as, racist laws.

Read More
157 Words | 1 Pages

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.

Read More
147 Words | 1 Pages

If you think raising a family is full of challenges, then you should try raising a farm. Generally speaking you don’t eat your kids, but in Novella Carpenter’s case, her animals were her children. In obstacle, she learns the ins and outs of farming, all while devolving as a person. Carpenter informs her readers of the relations ships she made both in Oakland and the garden. She dealt with life and death around and within the garden.

Read More
553 Words | 3 Pages

In the book, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, August and Rosaleen unawarely found themselves as a mother figure for Lily Owens. After losing her mother, Lily was lost. She found herself resulting to the comfort of bees as a source of love. After her mom’s death, Rosaleen, her house keeper began to treat Lily as her own. As the book continued Lily met August, a motherly bee keeper that Lily found intriguing.

Read More
163 Words | 1 Pages

Chapter eight’s epigraph in The Secret Life of Bees explains how isolation can tear a family apart whether it be bees or humans. To begin, the main representatives from the epigraph would be August, June, and May characterizing the honeybee sisters, and May portraying the honeybee left in the dark, or isolated from the truth. When August and June decided to not tell May of the incidents going on, for her well being, the sisters did not see it as a problem. in their minds, as long as May didn 't find out, she would be fine, but when she did it was worse than ever could be imagined. Instead of expressing her emotion by sobbing, singing, rocking, and tugging she sat silently and limply, her eyes glazed over as if nothing made it through

Read More
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.

Read More
1406 Words | 6 Pages

Progressively in my opinion, the inherent value of literature as being genuine and sincere portrayals of societal ideas has been dilapidated, as the novels, which appeal to the modern-day generation, are more fueled and driven by action rather than the ideas themselves. It is, thus, rare to encounter literary works which have a degree of literary realism and contain the inherent value that comes with literature. And, hence, it is satisfying to people, whose are eyes are opened to the value of literature, when such a literary work is found. New York Times bestseller, The Secret Life of Bees, is one of these rare works of literary art as it serves its main purpose to enlighten us of the ideals and beliefs which people held during the era of

Read More
520 Words | 3 Pages

Black Madonna What happens to those that are not loved? Will they ever seek happiness? Sue Monk Kidd beautifully conveys the struggles of finding love beneath pain in the novel “The Secret Life of Bees”. Lily is a fourteen year old girl that has fallen under her father's abusive commands ever since her mother, the only person she loved was accidentally shot and killed by Lily herself.

Read More
162 Words | 1 Pages

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.”

Read More
1026 Words | 5 Pages

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live in a small town, without a mom, and with an abusive dad? In the book The Secret Life of Bees, it takes you through the life of Lily Owens, a young girl who learns many truths about life. With the help of several people along the way, Lily learns about her late mother and learns to be a better person. She comes to learn about racism, the power of women, the impact of love on life, and she learns the key to forgiveness.

Read More
993 Words | 4 Pages

The author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey, presents the ideas about venerability and strength by using his characters and the way they interact with each other to establish whether they are a submissive or a dominant, tamed or leading, venerable or strong. Kesey uses strong personalities to show the drastic difference between someone who is vulnerable and someone who is strong. Nurse Ratchet is a perfect example of how Kasey presents the idea of strength over the venerability of others (the patients). Keys also exhibited vulnerability throughout characters such as Chief Bromden and his extensive habit of hiding himself in all means possible from Nurse Ratchet. Another idea presented by Kesey is a character’s false thought on what

Read More
1311 Words | 6 Pages

How the decisions one makes can affect others in The Secret Life of Bees In American author Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees, fourteen-year-old Lily Owens abandons her abusive father, Terrence Ray, with her caretaker Rosaleen. They set off on an adventure to find closure after her mother’s tragic death, and end up in Tiburon, South Carolina. She is taken care of by the Boatwright sisters, August, May, and June, who takes her under their wings and teaches her about their religion, while she learns about her mother’s life.

Read More
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.

Read More
740 Words | 3 Pages

In today’s society, people often find difficulty setting and achieving goals due to setbacks and hardships. However, in Akeelah and the Bee, a young girl works toward her goal of winning the national spelling bee. Her persistence and heartwarming story entertain the audience while providing an inspiration for achieving goals.

Read More

More about The Secret Life Of Bees Character Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document