The Secret Life Of Bees Rhetorical Analysis

A historical fiction novel, The Secret Life of Bees, written by American author Sue Monk Kidd, focuses on a young girl named Lily who runs away from her home, and tries to discover more about her mother, since she only remembers seeing her when she was very young, and does not know why she hasn't seen her since. Lily believes the reason for this is because her mother left her and her father. This creates confusion for Lily, and makes her question why her mother would leave, leaving her to be frustrated. In The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd uses tone, simile, and syntax in order to show the theme of the emotional impact of feeling a sense of abandonment.

Throughout this passage, Kidd uses tone several times to express how Lily feels about her mother's

She says, “I couldn’t think what to do. I felt a powerful sadness, not because of what I’d done, as bad as that was, but because everything seemed emptied out”(Kidd 111-112). In this quote, she uses a numb tone to reveal the emptiness that can result from being neglected. This is revealed through the diction of “I couldn’t think what to do”, she says after her outburst. Then, she states that it feels like “everything seemed emptied out”, which shows the amount of exhaustion she feels. This displays the tone of numbness as a result of her outrage, emphasizing that she needed to unpack many strong emotions, due to her mother abandoning her. Shortly after Lily expresses these feelings of emptiness she later on asks herself, “‘How come you left me?’’’ I whispered, watching my breath make a circle of fog on the glass”(Kidd 111-112). The tone of this quote is suffering, which is displayed when she uses rhetorical syntax about her mother, asking, “How come you left me?” which reveals her desire to know why her mother left her. Also, because she “whispered”, it adds emphasis to the quote by adding a sense of defeat and vulnerability in her tone. It is shown that Lily wants to know the reason why her mother abandoned her unveiling the amount of emotion caused by her mother’s abandonment. These examples of tone help the reader have a

In this quote the dashes create a pause which draws emphasis to what is said, and makes it more explicit. In addition, the word choice that is used in the quote stresses the emotions of what she is expressing. What Lily is experiencing in this quote reveals to the reader how empty she feels from letting go of all the emotions she had because of her mother leaving her. Following this, immediately after Lily says “There was nothing left to do. No place to go. Just right here, right now, where the truth was”(Kidd 111-112). The telegraphic syntax puts focus on the words used in the quote. There is also a repetition in the quote of the word “right” followed by words that indicate the present, which brings all the attention to the specific moment that is taking place. Because When Lily explains that nothing else can be done, it creates a pausing effect in the quote, which shows that she's done everything to let out all her emotions that stem from her abandonment. The use of syntax in the passage provides the reader with an understanding of the emptiness in Lily due to her mother neglecting