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Secret life of bees essay
Problems with racism in literature
Secret life of bees essay questions
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In the Sue Monk Kidd novel “The Secret Life of Bees” it talks about torture, death, and racism. A 14 year old girl named Lily Owens, who went to explore her mother’s past after being tortured enough by her father. During this journey, her perspective about her past and society changed many times after she experienced racism, torture, and learned about her mother. To begin with, you can see Lily change of perspective on racism throughout the novel. In the beginning, Lily assumed that all African Americans are just like Rosaleen, who is rude and uneducated. Like when Lily calls Rosaleen dumb for dumping snuff juice on a white person 's boot and not saying sorry (176). However, after living in the Boatwright home, her perspective on racism changed. …show more content…
At the start of the novel, Lily hated her father (T.Ray) for torturing, yelling at her, and lying about her mother. For example, he poured a mound of grits the size of an anthill on the pine floor. “Get over here and kneel down. ”(40) But Lily is used to the pain and said that she been kneeling on grits since she was six. Other examples in the early stages of the novel are when T.Ray yelled at Lily about her mother “The truth is. Your sorry mother ran off and left you. The day she died, she’d go back over get her things, that’s all. You can hate me all you want. But she’s the one who left you. ” (61) After Lily flee from T.Ray and she thought what if T.Ray was home missing me, saying, “Why oh why didn’t I love her better? ” (231) Which show Lily still thinks about T.Ray and whether he cared about her or not. By the end of the novel Lily forgive T.Ray when she said “Daddy” I said. I shouted it. “Daddy! ” (424) and when her dad left, she thought that he probably loved me in his own smallish …show more content…
At first, she thought that her mother the only one that cared for her as she shouted “My mother will never let you touch me again! ” And “My mother loved me! ” I cried (60) to her father which emphasized how much Lily loved her mother. But after she learned about her mother past she starts to hate her mother saying “It was easy for her to leave me, because she never wanted me in the first place. ” (362) thinking that she was an unwanted child. She later on disliked her mother saying “You should 've let him put her in there. I wish she’d rotted in here” (363) and “Like what? ” I said “Abandon their children” thinking that she a psycho leaving her with T.Ray and not going to come back for her. However, later discover that Lily the one that killed her own mother when she was packing her stuff and about to bring Lily along. She later on realize that the Boatwright sisters and Daughter of Mary were also her mother since they cared about Lily so
Most runaway youth are homeless because of neglect, abuse and violence, not because of choice. Lily Owens is the protagonist in the novel, Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, is no different. Lily is a fourteen year-old girl still grieving over her mother's death. T. Ray a man who has never been able to live up to the title of a father, due to years of abuse, has not made it any easier. 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.
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.
A poignant and touching classic, The Secret Life of Bees details the coming of age stories of a young girl named Lily. Her life up until the start of the novel was hard, she was friendless with an abusive father and a heavy conscience, as she believes that she is responsible for her mother’s death. Lily’s only solace is her stand-in-mother, a black woman named Rosaleen, so when Rosaleen is hauled to jail for standing up for herself, Lily decided to run away to a mysterious town that has some linkage to her mother. Her escapades lead her to three, wonderful, eclectic, devout followers of Mary, and to a new life. As the story unfolds, an elaborate symbol lies hidden just beneath the surface, one that seems so obvious, but only lies as a hidden
The first example of Lily’s coming of age is in her spiritual development. She is introduced to the Daughters of Mary, who connect her to the Black Madonna. When Lily first sees the Black Madonna, she thought that:
In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Lily has assumptions, biases, and prejudices about race that are changing over the course of the novel.
First, Kidd highlights the power of strength through indirectly characterizing Lily as a courageous young woman to display the character’s growing maturity throughout the novel. Her courageousness is demonstrated after T Ray, Lily’s father, picks her up from jail. Upon arriving home, it is clear that Lily is displeased about how T Ray handled the situation. Vexed and irritated, she challenges him: “‘You don’t scare me,’ I repeated, louder this time. A brazen feeling had broken loose in me, a daring something that had been locked up in my chest’” (38). Even though Lily knows that disrespecting her father will mean terrible consequences, kneeling on Martha White grits, she proceeds
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.
The Secret Life of Bees delineates an inspirational story in which the community, friendship and faith guide the human spirit to overcome anything. The story follows Lily Owens, a 14 year old girl who desperately wants to discover the cause of her mothers death. Her father T. Ray gives her no answers, which leads their maid, Rosaleen, to act as her guardian. Together, Lily and Rosaleen run away to Tiburon, South Carolina and find a welcoming community. It is in Tiburon that Lily learns many life lessons, including many about herself. In her novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd explores a theme of spiritual growth through Lily's search for home as well as a maternal figure.
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.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a story about racial struggle between black and white in 1964, which is in the middle of the civil right movement in South Carolina. The narrator and protagonist of the story named Lily raised by T. Ray, her father, who has bias towards black people at all time. Due to the fact that T. Ray often says something regards to racial discrimination, Lily starts to thinks that whites are superior than the others unconsciously. Also Lily was not aware that she is being an unconscious racism because of T. Ray until she starts to live with Boatwright sisters who are black. T. Ray often takes his anger out on Lily since Deborah left the house and it trigged abuses and ignores Lily. Moreover, though T. Ray treats Lily so badly, he seems like and acts like he doesn’t care. In other words, it was impossible to feel any humanity in T. Ray. One of the most important and influential characters named T. Ray is prejudiced, violent and cruel person.
In the novel, “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd, the story reflects the time when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved. Tension is rising in the southern states of the United States where most of the people there are against this bill. One of these states is South Carolina where the story takes place. It tells the story of Lily a fourteen year old girl living in Sylvan, South Carolina with her abusive father called T.Ray and a black maid named Rosaleen. After having to confront some troubling events, Lily and Rosaleen get to stay in the house of the Boatwright sisters, who are known to make the best honey in South Carolina. T.Ray had already fought in the war. He is a resentful and an angry man. The main cause of his behaviour is because when her wife died, she was about to leave him. This causes him to take out all of his anger on his innocent daughter, being really cruel sometimes towards her. At the end of the novel, Lily’s father let her stay with the Boatwright sisters. This decision is consistent with T.Ray’s character because it shows us how he is a careless, unloving and prideful person.
Martin Luther King once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees fully embodies his idea of equality, by introducing the story of a fourteen-year-old white girl named Lily Owens, who lives during the time of the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina. Lily’s mother was killed in an accident when Lily was a little girl. Ever since, she lives with her father T-Ray, and her black surrogate mother, Rosaleen, in Sylvan, South Carolina.
The segregation in the southern states is very prominent during that time period. For instance, Lily’s housekeeper Rosaleen could not live in the same house as Lily, nor could she worship in the same church. Lily finally had enough of her abusive father T.Ray and decided to run away along with their housekeeper Rosaleen who she broke out of jail. The only place she desired to go was the town written on one of her mother’s pictures. On the back of a photograph of a black version of Mary Lily’s mother had written the town Tiburon. Lily and Rosaleen arrive at the outskirts of Tiburon, after a combination of hitchhiking and walking, hungry and tired. As Lily shopped in a convenience store for lunch she noticed a jar of honey with the picture of the same black Mary as her mother’s picture. The store clerk points them in the right direction and they end up at the Botwright's house. As she is conversing with August Botwright Lily notices something peculiar. As she lies on her cot she thinks to herself; “T. Ray did not think colored women were smart. Since I want to tell the whole truth, which means the worst parts, I thought they could be smart, but not as smart as me, me being white. Lying on the cot in the honey house, though, all I could think was August is so intelligent, so cultured, and I was surprised by this.” (Kidd.78). Meeting and interacting with August depicts how much involuntary prejudice she had inside of her that she was not previously aware of. Lily used this experience to learn how you can’t judge a person based off their race and made herself rethink her thoughts on African-American people. Lily’s first meeting August contributes to the theme of not judging people based off of prejudice because August disproves Lily’s stereotype that African-Americans couldn’t be as smart as
...gh daughter because of her wealth. Lily is aware that marrying for money and social staus will not bring her happiness, but chooses a socially uplisfting life instead of her own happiness. Later in the novel we find out that Gryce marries another woman . This shows the importance of money and social status, and also, how powerful the elite circle, that lily will do anything to be apart of, is. From the previous events, one can deduce that you can never rely on man to bring you to power. The New York circle is so exclusive and elite that you can never be sure of your position, you must constantly plan, plot, and climb your way to the top, and once there you must fight to keep your position. This is the life the Lily Bart wants to badly, in Old New York money, social status, and how other perieve you was the most important things to these woman.
August was correct when she said that Lily must be her own mother. Lily will not always have someone to care for her. If this happens she must learn to care for herself. Lily was also relying too much on the statue of Mary. When the statue of Mary was chained up Lily could not go to her for help.