“A sense of inadequacy often informs the question around ‘Who am I?’”. An article written by Mel Schwartz for Psychology Today explores the idea of identity and what it means to an individual. The information presented in this article can be connected to characters in the novels The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. In each of these stories, characters are faced with a lack of sense of self, not knowing who they are because they think that they mean nothing to the world and are even worthless at times. This lack of identity due to the feeling of inadequacy affects Max in The Book Thief relationally and Lily in The Secret Life of Bees emotionally, while also creating better character development. In …show more content…
After Lily runs away from home on a mission to find out the truth about her mother, she faces emotions and feelings that she never knew before. After learning that her mother left her when she was a baby, Lily storms the “honey house” where she is staying and destroys everything in sight. Looking around at the wreckage, Lily notices as “a trickle of bright red blood wound down my left arm…My heart beat wildly. I felt like I’d unzipped my skin and momentarily stepped out of it, leaving a crazy person in charge” (Kidd 259). Her frustration and anger lead her to be a person she didn’t know and was ashamed of. But, as she learns more about her mother and her past, she eventually realizes that “in a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds. They provide me some real nice sympathy, with a feeling I was exceptional…What a special case I was” (Kidd 278). Her emotions had gotten the better of her in the past, but now she learns that they are a part of her and they are something to embrace and find comfort in. They make her unique. The emotional roller coaster Lily is on makes readers focus more and more on how Lily’s emotions affect the story, how her actions allow her to find herself in a world of hate and untold