I really was impacted by T. Ray’s quote during the height of the tension about Lily’s past mistakes, “ ‘It was you who did it, Lily. You didn’t mean it, but it was you’ ” (Kidd 299). This moment was one of my favorites because it showed the growth the lead character had made toward not only forgiving her mother, but forgiving herself. When Lily chases after her father to finally get the raw truth about the fateful day her mom died, it reveals that she is finally ready to come to terms with her past, no matter what really happened. At the beginning of the book, she can’t accept her mother’s death, her disappearance, and her lack of love from her parents. Coincidentally, she grasps at any excuse to punish herself because she is unsure of who she is. …show more content…
Even though the book’s peak occurs right before this quote, I believe this moment is the most crucial for the characters. Lily daring to ask her father if she was indeed responsible for her mother’s passing tests all the progress her self-image has made this far. The intrepid inquiry’s answer enforces another theme in the book: what you’ve done isn’t who you are. The main character learns this lesson time and time again throughout the course of the story, but this time her father finally gifts her with it, a small sign of respect for his daughter. All in all, the quote is one of my favorites because of it’s significance in Lily’s development, helps T. Ray to come to terms with his past as well, and significance to the message that The Secret Life of Bees bestows to its characters, and simultaneously to its
“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.” In this powerful statement, Rikki Rogers explains the true power of strength. Strength can help a person deal with problems they once thought were impossible to handle. Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees clearly reflects this idea through the author’s usage of indirect characterization, symbolism, and allusion. In the novel, Kidd applies these literary devices in order to emphasize the effect strength has on a person’s actions.
Lily is a dynamic character who in the beginning is negative and unconfident. However, throughout the novel Lily starts to change into the forgiving person she is at the end. In the beginning of the novel, as the reader is first introduced to Lily’s character, she comes across as an extremely negative young girl. While thinking about one of Rosaleen’s crazy ideas, she thinks to herself, “people who think dying is the worst thing,” she tells the reader, “don’t know a thing about life” (2).
This “home” that she finds brightly displays the ideas of identity and feminine society. Though Lily could not find these attributes with T. Ray at the peach house, she eventually learns the truth behind her identity at the pink house, where she discovers the locus of identity that resides within herself and among the feminine community there. Just like in any coming-of-age story, Lily uncovers the true meaning of womanhood and her true self, allowing her to blossom among the feminine influence that surrounds her at the pink house. Lily finds acceptance among the Daughters of Mary, highlighting the larger meaning of acceptance and identity in the novel. The meaning behind Sonsyrea Tate’s statement can be found deeply rooted within Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees.
T. Ray from The Secret Life of Bees seems to be mean and horrible in the novel, but this essay proves otherwise. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd takes place in South Carolina during the Civil Rights Era, where Lily, the main character, lives. This time period is an important part of American history and many of the characters go through some dramatic changes and discover new elements of themselves. The focus of this essay will be on T. Ray, Lily’s father, who grows as a character throughout the novel, and is dishonest and controlling in the beginning of the novel. This is in view of the fact that T. Ray is very protective of Lily, but learns to let her go, realizing that she is better off with the Boatwright sisters.
Heart break, joy, love, happiness, The Book The Secret Life of Bees has it all! The book is about a young girls that accidentally shot her mother. After spending nine years with her abusive, and emotionally absent father, she decides to run away. So, she breaks her beloved nanny out of prison, and Lily escapes to Tiburon South Carolina, a town she links to her mother through the writing on one of her old possessions. While in Tiburon, Lily finds the calendar sisters three very different, very helpful sisters. The family agrees to take Lilly in, despite the fact that almost every white person in town frowns upon the very idea of this white girl staying in an African American household. While staying with the sisters, August, May, and June, Lily learns lots of things, ranging from bee keeping, to why and how her mother first left her. She falls in love, explores her past, and finds it within herself to forgive her mother for leaving her, and herself, for shooting her mom. This book is rich in both emotion, and culture.
Intro: Working around the hives; dedicated and faster with each movement. Honey drizzling in golden crevices; a family unit working together, buzzing in harmony. Bees and beehives is a significant motif in the novel Secret Life of Bees: By Sue Monk Kidd because it represents the community of women in the novel. It also represents Lily Owen’s longing and need for a mother figure in her life. And finally, it was significant because the bees lived a secret life, just as Lily and Rosaleen did in the novel.
With an increase in familiarity, as she progresses her outlook on life changes with her. By the closure of The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens experiences passion, rage, joy, and sorrow in larger quantities than most teens her age. Amidst every trial transpires an improved
The setting in the Secret life of bees helps set the overall structure of the book. As the setting changes, and certain events take place, so does the characters views on life. The most change seen is on Lily, the main character. Her values multiply and her perspective on cultural order shifts from one mind set to another. Although one part of the book’s setting limits the opportunities of the characters; the other part opens those and different opportunities. The setting in The Secret Life of Bees is vitally important because it impacts the main character and the people around her through events that transpire in the book.
All through this novel, every section starts with a quote from a book about honey bees, by perusing these opening quotes one associated with me in a more deeper way. In the first chapter we take a flashback ten years back to when Lily was four. Lily lives with her abusive father who mostly takes his anger out on her since Deborah left, but recently her mother came back to bring her little girl with her and separate from her father T-Ray. The quote from section one expresses, “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” (1). I feel all throughout the book Deborah represents the
They also learn that the main character’s father, an owner of a peach farm, is verbally and physically abusive to her. There are many events that lead up to the climax of the story which are called rising actions. Some of the rising actions in this story are when Lily decides to run away from home and take Rosaleen with her. They travel to Tiburon, South Carolina and meet the Boatwright sisters - August, June, and May - who are kind enough to take them in. While staying with the sisters, August, the eldest sister of the three, teaches Lily about keeping bees and making honey. The climax of the story does not occur until almost the end of the story. During her stay with the sisters, Lily’s father has been searching for her. He finally finds her in Tiburon and knocks on the front door of the sisters house. He was angry and wanted Lily to come back to the farm with him, but of course, Lily protested. T. Ray finally gave up, got in his truck, and started to drive down the road when Lily stopped his truck. She faced her father and asked him if she had been the one to shoot her mother. When he tells her that that was true, Lily’s heart broke. In the resolution, August helps Lily realize that it was not her fault and she should stop blaming herself. She also realized that there are mother figures all around and if she puts her faith into something,
In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees she indirectly characterizes the dealer, Franklin Posey, as prejudiced against black people to showcase the extreme racist attitudes in the south. An example occurs when Rosaleen poured black spit on Posey’s shoes following his verbal harassment, “ ‘Your black ass is gonna apologize one way or another,’ the dealer said, and he stepped toward Rosaleen” (36). The fact that Franklin uses profanity illustrates his contempt for Rosaleen. Further, his physical advancement toward Rosaleen indicates that he was trying to threaten and intimidate her. This encounter displays the blatant disrespect for African Americans in the south represented by Rosaleen. During this time, many white men believed themselves
A beehive without a queen is a community headed for extinction. Bees cannot function without a queen. They become disoriented and depressed, and they stop making honey. This can lead to the destruction of the hive and death of the bees unless a new queen is brought in to guide them. Then, the bees will cooperate and once again be a prosperous community. Lily Melissa Owens, the protagonist of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, faces a similar predicament. While she does not live in a physical hive, the world acts as a hive. She must learn to work with its inhabitants, sharing a common direction, in order to reach her full potential. The motif of the beehive is symbolic of how crucial it is to be a part of a community in order to achieve
I learned terminology such as pathos, ethos, and logos. I learned when we had to write a case for the poor man's bees. I would have liked to have learned more about classic literature by having reading assignments. I most enjoyed Essay 2 because I argued that the WWE is art and the nature of art is a philosophical topic and fun to debate. I found the assignments in which students had to fill out a template from "They Say, I Say" and respond to as few to be the least enjoyable. I feel this way because most students would make an argument that most would agree with such as "eating healthy is good". I think some sort of reading assignments of classical examples of whatever we where covering at the time could be a good addition to the class.
The Secret Life of Bees, written by Sue Monk Kidd is a very good example of a bildungsroman novel, as throughout the book, Lily learns to love and forgive herself as well as figure out who she really is. The main reason that her maturity grows so dramatically is partly due to change of location. When she lived in Sylvan, all she saw in life was shielded by white prejudice. When she escaped to Tiburon and lived in a house full of black women, she began to see past race and realized how bad things are for people of color. The idea that surroundings shape the psychological or moral traits in a character can be supported by Pauline Hopkins, who once said “And, after all, our surroundings influence our lives and characters as much as fate, destiny or any supernatural agency.”.
Ruth, Elizabeth. “The Secret Life of Bees Traces the Growth of Lily’s Social Consciousness.” Coming of Age in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2013. 63-65. Print. Social Issues in Literature. Rpt. of “Secret Life of Bees.” The Globe and Mail 2 Mar. 2002: n. pag.