The Troubled Consciousness of Sylvia Plath as seen in “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
In the poem, “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” Sylvia Plath uses a metaphor to
represent the darker aspects of the subconscious that are leaking into her conscious mind:
The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can’t keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.
It is inevitable that Plath will need to face the bees that lie in the box. She is “appalled”
at the thought of letting them out. She says “I am no source of honey/So why should they
turn on me,” but she is still clearly convinced that they pose a threat. She suggests that
the bees taken separately would not be too difficult to handle, but that now they are like a
“Roman mob” and could kill her. Plath emphasizes the fact that she has “ordered” this
box in the first and fifth stanzas. This suggests that she knew she would have to deal with
what the bee box represents.
The bees that are locked up in the box symbolize the swarming and potentially
destructive chaos that Plath can feel within herself. The bees have the ability to inflict
pain on her and sting her. She longs to take control over the bees to save herself from any
more pain. In the fifth stanza Plath does assert dominance over the bees in the box:
“They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.” She is trying to convince
herself of her own strength by placing herself in a position of power.
There is a correlation between the bees and her father. Her father Otto Plath was
an expert on insects--especially bees. The whole series of bee poems relates to her father
(like “The Bee Keeper’s Daughter”). If the bees are locked in the box, then much of what
she is feeling is connected to her father. Perhaps she is trying to place herself in control
of the troubling memory of her father. Plath needs to confront her feelings of
abandonment and despondency. The description of the box as “dark” in the third stanza
further implies that part of what she must deal with inside of the box is related to him. In
“Daddy” Bishop refers to her father’s “fat black heart.” She also refers to him as the
“man in black” or the “black man” in other poems.
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.
In her novel, she derives many of her characters from the types of bees that exist in a hive. Lily and Zach have characteristics 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 to themselves.
As the epigraph for chapter 14 states, “A queenless colony is a pitiful and melancholy community; there may be a mournful wail or lament from within… Without intervention, the colony will die. But introduce a new queen and the most extravagant changes take place” (277) The initial changes with the introduction the new queen seem insignificant, but they are anything but. It begins with Lily taking over May’s old room. It is extremely symbolic of her fulfilling the role left empty in the house. Then, August stood up to T. Ray for Lily to ensure that she would stay in the house with her, effectively keeping her safe, and under her watchful eye, just as she had with May. Many other changes, large and small occur as Lily transfers to her new role, but each is significant to the bee symbolism.
Miline, Ira Mark. Ed. "The Secret Life of Bees." Novels for Students. Vol. 27. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Print.
Para 2: First of all, Bees and beehives is a significant motif in the novel by Kidd because it represented the community of women. The Boatwright sisters, along with Our Daughters of Mary, stood up for Lily when T. Ray came to take her home. Quoted from page 721, “The four of them lined up beside us, clutching their pocketbooks up against their bodies like they might have to beat the living heck out of somebody.” The Daughters of Mary all stood in the parlor of the Boatwright house, ready to take on whatever came their way. The community of women in this novel stuck together
The meaning behind Sonsyrea Tate’s statement can be found deeply rooted within Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees. The desire for “home,” or identity, within Lily is the driving force that leads her to find the pink house and the Calendar Sisters. This new physical and spiritual “home” that Lily finds illuminates the larger meaning of the novel, which is acceptance and identity, and displays where she truly
The bees symbolize Lily’s unspoken guides throughout the novel. Kidd’s constant reference to the bees indicate that Lily eventually understands the importance of female power in the bee community, which she connects to her own life. When Lily initially sees the bees in her room, Rosaleen warns her that they can sting her if she tries to catch them, but Lily ignores her and continues to trap them, thus asserting her determination. Later, the bees reveal the message to Lily that she should leave her father. Kidd notes that one bee landed on Lily’s state map that she kept tacked on the wall, foreshadowing Lily and Rosaleen’s journey to Tiburon (10). The bees also symbolize the secret life that Lily lives as she hides her secret of running away from home. The hive represents society while the bees represent all of the humans inside. August tells Lily about the hives and announces, “Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about” (Kidd 148). The beehive cannot sur...
Many individuals have a philosophy of life, but Lily Owen’s is unique. Throughout The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens establishes her philosophy of life. At the opening of the novel, she is a pure girl whose horrors become a reality the following day. Once she has the truth of her mother’s parting imprinted into her head, everything Lily favors correct is proven wrong. After fleeing the jailhouse alongside Rosaleen she endures a drastic transition in age.
Finally, the novel The Secret life of Bees demonstrates the emotional maturity, and growth of the both Lily and Zach, during times of systematic racism. The novel authentically represents Civil Rights Movement’s time, and makes us realize how spiritually sad and dangerous these times were.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath: 1950-1962. 430 Ed. Karen V. Kukil. Transcribed from the original manuscripts at Smith College. New York: Anchor, 2000.
...he language of war. One of her last poems shows how this vision both restricted and unconstrained her expression (Magill 2225). Some of Plath’s poems, though the personal voice may be dying out, are still very personal (Magill 2226). Plath’s symbolism comes from an arrangement of misfortune. The purpose of Plath’s poems is to show a deeper pattern (Hughes 5). Plath’s narrative, The Bell Jar, remained important to most readers (“The Importance…” 2). Plath believes relationships are necessary, but destructive (Smith 6).
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Print.
When Sylvia Plath was told her father died at the tender age of nine, she bitterly said, “I’ll never speak to God again.” In her brief but indispensable writing career, Plath distinguished herself in the poetical realm with her body of work that includes but is not limited to poems, short stories, and one semi-autobiographical novel. Her legacy lives on through her dark themes laden with powerful images such as the moon and skulls, while a father-type figure acts as a significant force either as a central antagonistic power or an influential shadow looming in the background. Brooding thoughts and despondent emotion overcome the reader when faced with one of Plath’s numerous works such as “Daddy,” “The Colossus,” and “Lady Lazarus.” Sometimes straightforward in understanding, Plath’s works contain intermittently placed, unique choices in diction like “mule bray, pig-grunt” throughout her works. On February 11, 1963, Plath was found with her head placed in her kitchen oven (death by carbon monoxide), yet she continues to resonate with people to this day; is it because we are able to relate to her melancholy and heartache? Or because of our sickening-interest in her suicide and the events that led to it? Maybe it is both. Because of her father’s death at a young age, Sylvia Plath’s poems underlies a theme regarding her suicidal demise and victimization at the hands of a patriarchal society, particularly from her husband, Ted Hughes, and late father, Otto Plath.
another, the boys devalue the bees and wind up destroying the beehive. In the poem, Baxter uses
Comparatively, in the sixth stanza, Path, refers to death as “the grave cave” and “how soon the flesh will be at home on her”, this fragment can be the representation of how calm she feels with killing herself and the connection she feels with doing it on her own house. Plath considers death as a satisfactory, comfortable act; and it’s here where her masochistic self surfaces, it provides an insight on how well at ease she feels with death. She also uses her death as a show. She does this by changing the language to that of a