Lily Owen Character Analysis

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Lily Owens, white fourteen year old girl from Sylvan, South Carolina, in 1964, struggles with the fact that she accidentally shot her mother at a very young age which caused her mother Deborah to pass away. From that point on her father T. Ray ordered her around, basically didn’t allow her to do anything besides go to school and sell peaches for him. Likewise, when she misbehaves he makes her kneel on grits as punishment, Lily endures the pain because she's too afraid to speak up against the tyranny of her father. Despite the circumstance Lily has Rosaleen, African American woman who Looks after Lilly and takes care of the house, she finds comfort in Rosaleen and sees her as a mother figure. However, when Rolaen goes to vote one day she runs into trouble and ends up facing jail time, but Lily manages to get Rosalen when she is in the hospital recovering and runs away. Lily goes to an address she found on a photo that belonged to her mother, which leads her to the doorsteps of a pink house owned by a bee …show more content…

For example, whenever May hears of the problems of the world she says “Oh, Susanna” that signals she's going to break down and needs to go to “her wall”. The wall is where May writes down what is causing her grief and this allows her to calm down, through word choice the audience gets a sense of what May endures. There's one incident when everything seems perfect and in the kitchen came the sound “Bloop.Bloop” and when Lily walks in she “loved” the way it “smelled”. The joy that radiates from this event is seen through the diction utilized compared to the somber environment of her father's house. In the end Lily finds a home, loved ones, and “mothers” that “are the moons shining over” her. Even though Lily had troubles along the way she eventually was happy and this is seen through the connotations

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