Theme Of Water In Secret Life Of Bees

Things never stay the same for too long and we, as humans, are constantly faced with changes coming from each direction. No matter how hard we try, changes will never stop barreling towards us and continue to force us to constrain to the new paths of life we must take. There are stop signs or breaks in life and we feel the impact of these changes constantly. These life changes plays a large role in Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees. Water plays a large role in Kidd’s novel during many different parts of the story. This symbol of water is constantly in the picture one way or another and is able to convey the message of change through it. In many of the changes throughout the book, water is usually a part of them. As well as these life changes

But, there is light in every change, even if they are presumed to be negative. Water can bring positive outcomes on people such as quenching thirst but can also cause problems such as flooding. In Secret Life of Bees, the reader can see one of these positive and negative changes take place. When May finds out something terrible has happened to one of her closest friends, she does not handle the information well. She starts out just asking for some quiet time alone out by the Wailing Wall, the wall that May is able to express her feelings with and calm her senses. After about 20 minutes, May does not return home. August, June, Rosaleen, and Lily go out in search for her. August then uncovers May’s dead body. Lily explains, “May lay in two feet of water with a huge river stone on top of her chest, ” (Kidd 317). This change is large and impactful on almost all the characters in the story. They all must start to adapt to this change on way or another. While for most, this change is negative and horrible, for May, it was a sweet release. May has always endured problems with her emotions from the time her twin sister had commited suicide. Since then, May has always felt everything all at once from every person. Her life has never been easy, so this release from the world may have saved her from a lifetime of pain. Although the rest of the characters are going to have mourn and deal with her passing, this sudden change for May was something that saved her. Water, in this case, brings a negative change to August and June by taking their sister and to Lily and Rosaleen by taking one of their friends. The change was very sudden and not expected. For May, the water, again, saved her from lifetime of pain. Although change can bring horrible outcomes and emotions, for some, the same change means a new beginning and being saved from the pain that was caused