How Does Death Influence Lily's Life

Lily’s life has been greatly influenced by her mother’s death. In Lily’s perspective, living with someone else’s death can be more painful that dying. This passage made me realize that your past isn’t that far behind you. It will always be there no matter how hard you try to forget about it or push it away. Lily has proven this several times throughout the book. But the results would be waking up from nightmares and not able to trust in her worth.

Lily suffers from a lot of guilt concerning her role in her mom's death. She still seems to feel guilty. I predict that the image of her mother dying and knowing that she is the cause of death will haunt her. Even though it was an accident and the bullet was supposed to be aimed for her father. Lily will continue to blame herself and wonder how life would have been different if she had taken the right shot; if her mother was still alive.

My favorite thing about this passage is that even then there was still some type of woman empowerment, even if it was rare. That she didn’t encourage her or tell her to just stay in the house. Lily’s teacher says this to her when Lily hints that she wants to be a hairdresser. This is significant because it shows that Lily’s self-esteem is low from living with T. Ray (her father). After Mrs. Henry says this to Lily, Lily

believes she can be a writer and practices whenever she can. This shows how important and life-changing it can be to believe or have faith in someone.
When Lily shows up at the Boatwright’s, one of the first things she sees is the statue of the Virgin Mary.

She soon learns that this statue has a whole backstory, that it is the figurehead off an old ship. That the slaves who discovered it had considered it to be a representation of the Virgin Mary. Lily learned that it had symbolic power; this "Mary" had become a source of strength and resourcefulness to the slaves. The statue remains incredibly significant to August's family; who inherited her from her mothers’ side. I liked the way the writer was intent to describe the statue in every way possible. Starting from the color to the smallest details describing her

story.
June says about Lily to August. When Lily overhears June make this comment, she becomes angry and thinks how absurd it is to dislike someone for her skin color. In this passage, the setting is important because white people do not usually experience this type of discrimination.