In the story of Secret Life of Bees written by Sue Monk Kidd there are many characters that I would admire. Sue Monk Kidd makes August Boatwright the oldest of the sisters the most admirable. In saying that, August is definitely the most encouraging, she is so on top of everything, she has her life together, her house is always clean, she successfully runs a company, and she has lots of inspiring quotes. This wise woman is like a queen bee to her sisters, she is the most influential person because she changes the main protagonist Lily into a different person. Just by the way she carries herself in the story is really a fascinating act. In addition, she is also like a parent figure for most of the characters in the book, especially for her two …show more content…
sisters and Lily. Even though none of the characters say this, I feel like if you were to ask any character in the book who the most influential person is to them they would say the same about August. Comparatively I would like to carry myself the same way, I mean, if the opposite race respects you and purchases your products, especially during this time, where there was racial segregation and harsh racism, you are definitely doing something the correct way. Despite her being only a human, she is a larger than life character in this story toward Lily because she is so inspiring and she is a one of a kind mother figure that Lily never had.. After reading this book I am passionate to be like her, but in a male form. In the future when I have kids, I will attempt to treat them the way August treats her sisters and Lily. Although, it may be hard to encourage the youth while they are going through difficult times, August is a professional in this area. As can be seen in the story, August helps Lily get through this difficult time in her life. Uniquely, August is one of those few people that God sent down to Earth to serve the people and to do good deeds. Correspondingly I would love to follow in her footsteps and be a great servant of God our Holy Father. As I was raised, my parents would always advise me to be a gentleman and to always be kind hearted to all people.
As a matter of fact, I grew up with my parents telling me “Treat people the way you want to be treated”. Usually, like 90% of the time, I treat people the way I would like to be treated, however, sometimes it doesn’t always work out that way, because some people are just way too immature and impatient. August on the other hand, treats everyone similarly. In other words she treats people with a warm heart and even if they treat her in a poor manner, she still shows them love. Likewise, I would love to change my ways so that I can be like August because she inspires not only me but the people in the book as well. All in all this relates to my life because I feel like even though I can be a little rude sometimes (only when people are rude to me), I am also very likeable, I don’t think I have any people that hate me or want to fight me. I love to be nice to everyone because I love seeing the smile on their faces. Not only is she an amazing person because she treats people the way they would want to be treated, but she also says some very inspiring stuff. Excitingly reading some of her quotes she said in the novel makes me feel so passionate about life. She says stuff that can be incorporated into everyday life, stuff that can change people's lives. One of her quotes that she says is as following: “Every person on the face of the earth makes mistakes, Lily. Every last one. We’re all so human. Your mother made a terrible mistake, but she tried to fix it.” In conclusion, August Boatwright is very intellectual and a very wise woman, she is a great woman because of how she has the ability to become a mother figure for Lily, not very many people can do that. When I grow up and have kids, I would like to be a great father just like August was a mother figure for Lily. I want to awe my children just like August puts Lily in awe of all the magical great deeds she
can do.
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).
In life, actions and events that occur can sometimes have a greater meaning than originally thought. This is especially apparent in The Secret Life Of Bees, as Sue Monk Kidd symbolically uses objects like bees, hives, honey, and other beekeeping means to present new ideas about gender roles and social/community structures. This is done in Lily’s training to become a beekeeper, through August explaining how the hive operates with a queen, and through the experience Lily endures when the bees congregate around her.
People share their secret lives without even talking about them. It only takes a glance or feeling to see that others have faced similar situations and problems, some people even live parallel lives. Despite the fact that many people believe it impossible for a measly insect, like a bee, to know the pain hardships a human faces, Sue Monk Kidd proves them wrong with her book The Secret Life of Bees. In her novel she derives many of her characters from the types of bees that exist in a hive. Lily and Zach have characteristic that are akin to that of field bees, August has that nurturing personality of a nurse bee, and the Lady of Chains is revered by her subjects just like a Queen bee is by her hive. Nowadays, no one ever faces a problem that someone, or something, has already faced. No one really has a secret life all to themselves.
The Power of an Author Authors have the ability justify the worst actions. Authors have a way of romanticizing certain situations in order to convey a specific message. A good author has power to influence the reader into believing whatever it is the author wants. When it comes to the story of Hannah Dustan, authors such as John Greenleaf Whittier have romanticized her captivity story along with the actions she took throughout her journey. Introducing a character that will be seen in the story is one of the most vital parts when creating a piece of literature.
In the novel In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, is a story of three girls who develop from being innocent girls to being part of a revolutionary to stop Trujillo a Dominican dictator. Throughout the story we see each of the sisters go through hard moments in their life. However the sister that has developed the most though is Minerva. She goes from being just a girl with a dream to be a lawyer too a woman willing to sacrifice anything to support the revolution and stop Trujillo.
Do you ever wonder how much you have changed in the past year? Not just physically, but in every aspect. Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd matures throughout the novel. Lily Owens matures because of her spiritual development. Also, she matures because of her social consciousness and her relationship with Zach. Sue Monk Kidd portrays the theme “coming of age” as difficult in The Secret Life of Bees.
Lily’s biases in The Secret Life Of Bees have altered greatly; she now knows that people of color have the ability to fend for themselves, and that they can be strong and influential people. The most outstanding thing that has caused Lily’s biases to change is the Boatwright sisters. August Boatwright was the person that took Lily by surprise, Lily was raised with this false philosophy that because she was white, she was superior, more intelligent than African Americans. “At my school they made fun of colored people’s lips and noses. I myself laughed at these jokes, hoping to fit in.
“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.
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
Grief leaves an imprint on those who experience it. Some can survive its deep sorrow, others cannot. In The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, she explores the effect of grief on the main characters. The novel opens with fourteen-year-old Lily Owns struggling with the knowledge that her mother was dead because she, as an infant, picked up a loaded gun and accidentally shot her. She runs away from her abusive father in search for answers of who her mother was. Lily hitchhikes to Tiburon, South Carolina; the location written on the back of an image of the Black Madonna – one of the only belongings she has of her mother’s. There, she finds a pink house inhabited by the Boatwright sisters who are African American women making Black Madonna honey. The Boatwright sisters have had their share of grief with the death of two of their sisters and the racial intolerance they face despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Boatwright sisters and Lily Owens have different methods of coping with grief; internalizing, ignoring, and forgetting are some of the ways they cope, with varying degrees of success. They discover that they must live past their grief, or else it will tear them apart.
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.
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.
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.
In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader has the experience to understand what it was like to live in an insane asylum during the 1960’s. Kesey shows the reader the world within the asylum of Portland Oregon and all the relationships and social standings that happen within it. The three major characters’ groups, Nurse Ratched, the Black Boys, and McMurphy show how their level of power effects how they are treated in the asylum. Nurse Ratched is the head of the ward and controls everything that goes on in it, as she has the highest authority in the ward and sabotages the patients with her daily rules and rituals. These rituals include her servants, the Black Boys, doing anything she tells them to do with the patients.
This book actually impacted my view on life a bit. Life is a fragile gift and this book made me wonder if I am using my time in all the wrong ways. We should all work to be using our days as best we can and try to be happy regardless of our sadness. As we all know that’s not as simple as it sounds, which makes the strength of Hazel and Augustus extremely inspiring and even eye-opening. When I compare myself to these two characters I hope I can be more like them.