The Secret Life Of Bees Quote Analysis

In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, I related to the character Lily Owens right at chapter one. In the first chapter of this novel, Lily was describing herself as a visual for readers. While Lily was briefly explaining her physical appearance, the line, “…Even the boys who wore their hair in ducktails dripping with Vitalis and carried combs in their shirt pockets didn’t seem to attracted to me, and they were considered hard up” (Monk Kidd 9), relates to many young girls. I, as a teenager, criticize myself very harshly just because a boy may not like me and that is what Lily is doing in this passage. I feel that Lily feeling this type of way and expressing it helped me to connect to her right from the beginning and put myself into her shoes

In the opening passage, I adore how the author made the setting a more peaceful scenario to take away all the darkness that occurred in the previous two chapters. An example would be, “I started appreciating Mother Nature, what she’d done with the world.” (Monk Kidd 57). This passage reminded me of my grandmother because she loves and admires nature. Nature’s creations leave her in awe just like Lily. I relished that the author helped Lily to experience such a peaceful view in her time of distress. Another quote I would like to include is, “A barge of mist floated along the water, and dragonflies, iridescent blue ones darted back and forth like they were stitching up the air. I t was such a pretty sight for a second I forgot the heavy feeling id carried since T. Ray had told me about my mother” (Monk Kidd). I appreciated this part of the passage because it created such magical scenery that strayed away from the darkness that was read by the readers in the previous passages. I saw a little bit of joy to liven up the darkness that I read previously about issues with her father. This reminded me of a time when I was having a low point in my life. I went out into the woods and seeing the tall trees and colorful flowers, it put me at ease like it did to Lily in the

To begin, the fact that Lily was white and Rosaleen was black shows the audience that racism was irrational. Even though at first, Lily thought all blacks were uneducated, we see her grow and learn. They bring characters like August that opened Lily’s eyes to a new world. When she begins to develop feelings for Zach it is a totally new world. In school she was taught that they were just trouble, but fell for him anyway and realized everyone was wrong. Continuing, another theme that led us through Lily’s adventure of growing up was her discovering how important storytelling was. She was going through gruesome horrid things, and when she read things like Shakespeare she realized how important it was because it helped her escape to a fantasy world for a little bit of time. Lastly, Lily learns the power of the female community. Lily grew up without a mother, so for a large chunk of her life she didn’t know the real power the female community held. She saw that having the support from other women encourages and comforts her. She experienced a love like no other. Lily begins to feel empowered. More empowered the she has ever felt with T.Ray. We watched her grow into a new person, with confidence and support from