There are two special populations portrayed in The Secret Life of Bees: African Americans and women. August, June, and May Boatwright along with Rosaleen are all African-American women. Other main characters such as Lily Owens and Zach Taylor fit into one special population but not both. As this film is set in South Carolina during 1964 with a largely African-American cast, racism is certain to be a central theme. The Secret Life of Bees renders the idea of racism as illogical. Each of the Boatwright sisters, Rosaleen, Zach, and the minor African-American characters are depicted with dignity that was reserved only for Caucasians during that time. While Lily’s racism does not manifest itself in the same manner as the men who harass her housekeeper, Rosaleen, back home, she is still prejudiced at the film’s start, Lily just assumes that all African Americans are uneducated because that is how Rosaleen is; however, she quickly learns that is not the case. The Boatwright sisters prove to be just as unique and more intelligent, strong, and bold than anyone else she knows. Another theme present in the film is the importance of female community. Throughout the movie, the audience continually sees women together—for healing, for strength, and to learn to forgive and love. Each of the women is fierce and strong in their own way. Despite the fact that May Boatwright committed suicide, we still saw courageousness within her. Community is essential to women; it allows us the freedom to be who we truly are and to feel loved and protected. It should also be noted that beehives cared for by August, Lily, and Zach serve as a parallel to the community established by August. Beehives are female-dominated structures in which a queen bee is mother t... ... middle of paper ... ...these two special populations have always had but was ignored by the majority. Works Cited Collica, K. (2010). Surviving Incarceration: Two Prison-Based Peer Programs Build Communities of Support for Female Offenders. Deviant Behavior, 31(4), 314-347. doi:10.1080/01639620903004812 Duman, N., & Kocak, C. (2013). The effect of social support on state anxiety levels during pregnancy. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 41(7), 1153-1163. doi:10.2224/sbp.2013.41.7.1153 Morales, A., Sheafor, B. W., & Scott, M. E. (2012). Social work: a profession of many faces. (12th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Pantell, M., Rehkopf, D., Jutte, D., Syme, S., Balmes, J., & Adler, N. (2013). Social isolation: A predictor of mortality comparable to traditional clinical risk factors. American Journal of Public Health, 103(11), 2056-2062. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2013.301261)
Sue Monk Kidd’s first novel The Secret Life of Bees was a literary success. Although, Sue didn’t just get successful on luck all of the sudden. In the Secret Life of Bees, Sue brought together many elements in order to complete her novel. Some elements include Sue's input of Southern Style Language, the aspects of the main character Lily's voice, and the inclusion of imagery.
“Lets imagine for a moment that we are tiny enough to follow a bee into a hive. Usually the first thing we would have to ge used to is the darkness”(Kidd 82). The bee is an insect that spends all day working: working to create a home, working to spread pollen and working to create honey. A bee's life and the society of bees can be closely related to the life of humans. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the author conveys her lessons about human life through the imagery of bees.
The Secret Life of Bees was published in 2002, about 40 years after Martin Lither King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream Speech”. By this, Kidd hint as the present day racism that is hidden and shows that despite the many social movements taken to eliminate racism, it still exists.
The Secret Life of Bees is a fiction novel set during 1964 in Sylvan and Tiburon South Carolina. As the story starts out, we as the reader are startled by the shocking and devastating story of a little girl who accidentally shot her mother. Lily wants desperately to be just like every other girl her age, and in order to learn the etiquette of a young lady, which she has missed out on, she dreams of attending the charm school during the spring, however, “[she] got barred because [she] didn’t have a mother, a grandmother, or even a measly aunt to present [her] with a white rose at the closing ceremony” (9). Told by the protagonist Lily, the story follows her along her quest for self-identification. Lily yearns to know more about her mother because her father refuses to speak a word about her. After finding a picture of a Black Mary, with Tiburon, S.C. written on the back, amongst her mother’s possessions, Lily wonders if her mother had been to Tiburon and promises herself that one day she’d go there because she wanted to go everyplace her mother had been (15). With that, she ventures off with her nanny to find out if her mother did indeed go there.
The organization of each honey bees job is fascinating, for each job is assigned to a bee in accordance to its age.
In “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd we see a young troubled Lily Owens who longs for answers about her mother and that maternal love which she never received. Lily blossoms from a fragile hurt little girl into and strong and independent young woman with the help of the Boatwright sisters. The major themes shown throughout the book are a longing for maternal love and the power and strength of female community.
Thompson, N (2005) Understanding Social Work: Preparing for Practice, Palgrave, MacMillan (Second Edition) Hampshire (Supplementary Course Reader)
The Secret Life of Bees is a story with many conflicts. There are conflicts involving racism, acceptance, and more. The story begins shortly before Lily and Rosaleen flee Silvan, South Carolina to find a new place to live. Soon after, Lily and Rosaleen meet a woman, named May, who is in a conflict with herself every day due to mental issues.
Wilson, K. et. al., 2011. Social Work ' Introduction to Contemporary Practice'. 2nd ed. Essex, England.: Pearson Education Ltd .
The honey bee! The producer of liquid gold! A honey bee is any bee that is a member of the genus Apis, known for their production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax. Honey Bees live in a nest, called a "hive." A single hive can have up to 80,000 bees, mostly workers. It is usually located in a hollow tree. The hive is ruled over by a queen bee.
From the beginning, the reader can clearly distinguish the main theme of racism in The Secret Life of Bees. Kidd first introduces racism in Chapter One when three white men insult Rosaleen on her way to town to register to vote. Lily says of the attack that follows, “They lunged at her...Rosaleen lay sprawled on the ground, pinned, twisting her fingers around clumps of grass. Blood ran from a cut beneath her eye,” (33). Racial violence did indeed run rampant during the 1960s, and attacks like Rosaleen’s happened often as whites struggled to suppress black voting freedoms. Though Kidd’s upbringing could have molded her into a racist herself, she refused to allow it and instead expresses her opposition through writing. Throughout the novel,
Bees have been around for millions of years and essentially help make the world function. They help grow our fruits and vegetables by pollinating them. Without them the world would be a very different place. Over time without the bees humans would eventually go extinct because we need them for our survival. It boils down to if bees go extinct humans will as well. Recent studies have been done that show that bee populations are declining. Our bee population has decreased by nearly half in recent years. Due to harsh winters, severe drought, and pesticides used on plants, bees are dying at an alarming rate.
The Secret Life of Bees was a book based on a girl who was trying to find out more about her mother. She experiences a lot of things and goes through many events throughout the book. While she does these things, we find out a lot about her personality. When reading this book, the reader can gets the impression that Lily is determined and a little bit of a troublemaker.
Honey bees are having a truly hard time at this moment. For around 10 years, they've been ceasing to exist at a remarkable rate—up to 30 percent for each year, with an aggregate loss of trained bumble bee hives in the United States worth an expected $2 billion.
Kidd’s employment of bees inThe Secret Life of Bees is crucial since they allude to Lily’s and the black women’s mirror of unification. For Lily, the bees in the jar are considered to reflect the spiritual messengers that are sent by the Virgin Mary. They are portrayed as the spiritual mediators standing as a symbol of compassion and freedom for Lily’s bleak loneliness. In this respect, Lily states that “Everyone of those could have descended on me like a folk of angels and stung me till I died” (3). The critic Harrold Buhner explains the bees sacredness by suggesting that “Bees are the messengers of the gods, bringing the sacred to human beings, with a kinship to the soul essence that all people possess” (20). In Kidd’s novel, the bees appear like the instructors in tracing Lily’s destiny as they provide her with a sense of deliverance. In her novel, Kidd