Entry 1- The book starts off about a couple of kids who were born and raised on the streets they are trying to make a better place. The three boys George, Rameck, and Sampson clean the street by picking up trash and fixing the broken benches with Sampson’s brother Andre. Sampson breaks his foot after dropping concrete on it during his attempt to move a concrete slab with Andre.
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
On the first page of the novel, “The Secret Life of Bees” the Heroine of the book, Lily Owens, declared that, “my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit,” (page 1) we as readers have no clue whatsoever what she is talking about. Lily seems like a child with a normal life but that can easily be proven wrong; at the age of four she happen to kill her mother without knowing it and has a father in which can be a bit brutal at times. Despite everything, Lily is a lady who loved to learn things about her mother every chance she got, it was clear she had love for Deborah, no doubt, even if she didn’t have any memories of her. An example that perfectly demonstrates this is the argument Lily and T. Ray had: Lily declared that Deborah wouldn’t
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.
Lily has to deal with extreme violence and T. Ray’s bad temper. “T. Ray has slapped me [Lily]
T. Ray often makes Lily kneel on the grits for hours and as Lily tries to look (and become) like her mother, (out of his love for his deceased wife,) T. Ray mocks at Lily’s willingness to be smart and attractive. He also makes Lily work on his farm for hours, after school and over the summer so that she cannot read books (which is her hobby), and uses mean words for his daughter. “Although …peers, and …culture influence children, parents still hold more sway than they think when it comes to having an impact on a daughter's developing self-esteem.” (Gurian, 2014)
“The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.” Page 1 The metaphor is meant to compare the loss of a queen bee to the loss of Lily’s mother. Lily’s family was bound together by her mother, as the hive is with their queen bee.
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
The story states, “Lily can have a home here for as long as she wants," August said”(Monk Kidd 427). This shows August telling T-Ray, Lily’s dad, that she can live with her for however long she wants. This also shows that August gave Lily a home when she didn’t want to go live with her abusive dad. August gave Lily support and a place to live. This shows that August had the most impact on Lily’s growth and development because without August, Lily would be homeless.
At the end of that month, T.Ray got his phone bill and saw that his call with Lily came from a lawyer’s office in Tiburon. He traveled there, asked the secretary Miss Lacy, and found Lily and Rosaleen. He lashed out at Lily with a knife like she was her mother. After that August interfered and gave him an easy way out so that Lily could stay and go to school in Tiburon and T.Ray would leave her alone. All of these events put an imprint on who Lily became.
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
Firstly, Lily decides that she has to leave T-Ray, her father and start a new life. During one of their many fights Lily realizes, “In a matter of
Lily, the main character in this novel is an insecure girl due to not only girls at school, but also her father, T-Ray, and his lies about her mother. By not having a motherly influence, lily didn’t have the example of a fine woman which is usually learned from girls’ mothers She even contemplated on going to an all girl school, in which it would teach her to be quote in quote “proper’. Rosaleen, as her housekeeper didn’t necessarily have a motherly influence on Lily, thus causing a lack of confidence in the teenage girl. This didn’t help the situation that Lily is haunted by the lingering thought of her mother’s death. In the end she ran away with her housekeeper Rosaleen, and to the only place she knew of, the
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
Ray illuminates her lack of a mother, and she uses the memory of Deborah along with Rosaleen to fight his ability to make her feel weak. Lily grows up being unloved by her own father, and his abuse fuels her pain. She longs for the presence of a mother to feel she has someone to gain power and wisdom from. “She would brush it into such a tower of beauty[... ]T.
