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What Does The Madonna Symbolize In The Secret Life Of Bees

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The Secret Life of Bees is a complex and intricate tangle of symbology that develops and strengthens the plot and themes of the story. Through targeted and meaningful symbols, the themes of motherly love and religious affiliations are unveiled. These symbols are easy to identify, yet the underlying truth behind them is a network of religious views, Greek culture, and many other factors. The unconventional ways in which Sue Monk Kidd utilizes symbology allow the characters of The Secret Life of Bees to develop their own unique, deep backgrounds. For example, the theme of the archetypal mother is seen throughout the story, yet the symbols used to reference the archetype are all interconnected. The character development of Lily Owens is driven by the theme …show more content…

The Madonna is a symbol for freedom and sacred feminism. It helps develop the theme of an independent women throughout the plot and allows Lily to see the prominent women figure that she never had (Hasan, Jabriel). It is this prominent women figure depicted in Black Madonnas gives a sense of power to women through the ability to create life. This idea celebrates the gift of reproduction and emphasizes the role of the mother figure (Hasan, Jabriel). Along with the powerful symbol of the Black Madonna, flowers also serve as a way to convey the same theme. The main Character's name, Lily, is in itself a symbol. The flower, Lily, is a predominantly white flower. This symbolizes the purity of the virgin mary. In addition, she finds a book in August’s bedroom that has pictures of the angel Gabriel giving a flower lily to Mary (Huseby, Amy). Rosaleen's name is also a significant symbol in the novel due to the fact that her name is very similar to the name Rosslyn. This name is vital because it means “rose line”,this term references the bloodline of Mary (Huseby, Amy). Flowers are also a clear symbol for fertility, much like Mary’s blessed fertility. The concept

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Journal #7 On page 182, Lily thinks to herself, “If August is the red heart on Mary’s chest, Rosaleen is the fist.” Lily believes August has the heart of Mary because she puts everyone before herself. For example, August tells Lily, “If it (the Caribbean Pink House) can lift Mary’s heart like that, I guess she ought to live inside it” (147). August wanted to choose a different color, but what mattered to her more was her little sister, May. August believes that with all the pain and grief May suffers from she deserves to have things that make her happy.

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The flower represents Ben Day. By the end of the book she finds out he was innocent after serving

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Starting the age of 5, we come to school everyday to learn something and expand our horizons. We start with the basics, such as the ABC’s and our 123’s, until we work our way up to a more in depth discussion of each subject, such as English II. This semester, I have learned topics in the field of English II,such as grasping the underlying meaning a book presents, the 12 archetypes, even the subject of debate. The semester began with the discussion of “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd.

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The book, The Secret Life of Bees, is a historical fiction novel written expertly by Sue Monk Kidd that encapsulates the emotional and physical journey of a teenage girl searching for her identity. Lily Owens, a fourteen year old girl from Sylvan, South Carolina, has an enormous emotional burden that no one her age should ever have to carry. Her mother, Deborah, died when Lily was four, leaving Lily with her abusive father, T. Ray, and just three items to remind Lily of the past: Deborah’s gloves, a picture of Deborah, and a strange wooden picture of a black Virgin Mary with the inscription “Tiburon, SC” written on the back. Little did Lily know, that picture would bring her a multitude of not only grief and pain, but answers as well. The address soon

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Almost every child has thought about running away from home at least once in their life, if not more. Although this usually is an empty threat, for Lily Owens, the protagonist in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, it was a milestone. The summer of 1964 marked the year she finally realized there was nothing holding her back from escaping her abusive father. As she leaves home for her journey, she takes her African American, motherlike housekeeper with her, who was in jail for insulting some racists. Together, they find their way to three beekeeping sisters, one of which helps Lily to finally understand what happened to her late mother.

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For example, the first use of a motif is when Ryle drops the casserole and hits Lily angrily, bruising her eye and hurting her head. The second motif comes up again when Ryle discovers Atlas´s number in the back of Lily's phone case and pushes Lily down the staircase out of anger. The last time it appears is when Ryle reads about Atlas in the newspaper and hurts Lily for a third time. These three events create motifs and reveal a much darker message that sometimes, even when we don't want to become the thing we fear the most, it isn't always inevitable. Along with the usage of motif, Hoover included satire and used it to make Lily's personality sarcastic and ironic.

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Although Lily did suffer a great loss from losing her mom, she gained so much more with the love and support that the Boatwrights and their group gave her. She has gained friends, someone to look up to, and the sense of family from all of them. Without the loss of her mom and the abuse of her dad she would never of gotten the experience of such powerful female role models and a new

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Throughout The Secret Life of Bees bees play a recurring role in the novel, repeatably being mentioned during the novel in epigrams before the start of each chapter and within the story itself. Unfortunately, on certain occasions the reason why bees are included in a certain part of the story can be unclear and confusing to readers, causing them to occasionally misinterpret the importance of bees throughout the novel. Regardless, the bees throughout play a very important role in understanding many of the themes and symbolism that Kidd included within the novel. In The Secret Life of Bees Kidd symbolizes Lily’s experiences and situations through the bees frequently present in the novel to show that seemingly different things can function in the same way.

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Why do you think some people can recover from traumatic events and some can not? The Secret Life of Bees is a book by Sue Monk Kidd that is set in South Carolina in the 1960s. In the story Lily (the main character) runs away from home to get away from her father and finds out more about her mother that died when she was little. On her journey to seeking out more about her mother she finds the Boatwright sisters. Lily learns later in the novel that August, the oldest Boatwright sister, used to take care of her mother.

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Kidd uses the characterization of Lily, T. Ray, May, and Deborah to demonstrate the theme that people’s lives are more complex than they appear. By using these characters, Kidd demonstrates how judgements are made about people based on their actions. People don’t always think about how a person really feels on the inside and they do not know about everything that goes on in their head. This is a theme that is significant to the world at any time period because everyone can relate to it. Therefore, the theme of this story is significant in people’s lives

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Imagery and Symbolism Edith Wharton creates the novel with a high percentage of imagery and symbolism in one. Some ways she combines both imagery and symbolism together is by a flower. Wharton states, “He had never seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse was to send them to May instead of the lilies. But they did not look like her - there was something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty”(Wharton).

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Lee’s usage of the azalea show readers Maudie 's compassionate and understanding personality, while the white camellias to were used to show Mrs. Dubose 's innocence and discriminatory

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Miss Strangeworth's roses symbolize her essence, as she is seen as pleasant like the blossom on a rose but on the bottom, it's thorny which is not obvious at first but can hurt those who end up touching

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Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, symbolizes the Boatright’s pink house as a spinner that leaves in the positive and removes the negative. For instance, “‘It separates out the honey,’ she said. ‘Takes out the bad stuff, leaves in the good. I’ve aways thought how nice it would be to have spinners like this for human beings. Just toss them in the let the spinner do its work’” (77).

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Alice Walker uses imagery and diction throughout her short story to tell the reader the meaning of “The Flowers”. The meaning of innocence lost and people growing up being changed by the harshness of reality. The author is able to use the imagery to show the difference between innocence and the loss of it. The setting is also used to show this as well.

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