Secret Life of Bees Sue Monk Kidd did a very good job at bringing the book to life. Not only did she bring in real life events, such as racism and child abuse, she also brings out the very relatable characters. This book lets others connect emotionally with the characters and relate to events that have occurred in the story. Me personally, I relate to this book and one character in particular. Lily Owens. Lily owens is a fourteen year old girl, living with her father after an incident occurred where she accidentally killed her mother when she was just a little girl. Ever since her mother died, so did apart of her dad, T Ray Owens. T-Ray portraits a angry and hurt man. Because of this, he treats Lily with no respect at all. Another reason
being is that Lily looks a whole lot like her mother, Deborah Owens. Deborah Owens was the mother of Lily and was married to T-Ray because she found out she was pregnant. She was very happy at first, so in love and it was the perfect family. It did not last that long. The happiness started to ware off and the smiles in their faces began to slide off. That is exactly what happened to my parents. There i was, like Lily, trying to make things better and not ruin the relationship anymore than it already was ruined. Lilys parents did not have such a great connection. T-Ray was very aggressive and seemed to harm Deborah in ways that made her go crazy. This reminds me of when my parents were going through getting a divorce. It was my mother's decision and no matter how hard my father tried to act as if he did not care, his actions sure showed he did. He turned into this angry, unhappy, non caring person there could be. He put all his anger towards me and my sisters. I dreaded being with him because all it was with him was constant yelling and aggression. In the story T-Ray had a punishment for lily when she disobeyed or did something wrong, kneeling on grits. My father had a punishment for me as well. It wasn't anything such as the grits but it was very lonely and frightening. He would lock me in a room and let me be all night and i would sit in there and think to myself why he was such an unhappy person. I tried to talk to him and get on a more emotional level, like Lily did with her father, but just like T-Ray he would push it to the side and act as if I did not just open my mouth and speak to him. His unhappiness was never good for me and all i wanted to do was run away. Lily, ran off with her housekeeper to where ever she could seek protection, a home, and food. I went somewhere to be happy, and be myself again. My mothers. I decided it was best that i moved with my mother because unlike my dad, she knew how not or at least hide the fact she was not unhappy. She cared for me and gave me all the love and support my father didn't give me like T-Ray to Lily. Lily was just a fourteen year old girl, trying to live a happy life, without worrying about her father being unhappy and taking out the anger on her. Just like me. Trying to ignore the fact that my father was an angry, evil person.
The book had a few characters that I liked, but a lot of characters that I disliked. For example Yasmine was a character that I disliked. I didn’t like her because she brought pain to Paige’s life. Yasmine and Paige were best friends for months in Sixth grade. They were constantly doing fun activities together, like having sleepovers or planning each other’s birthday parties, but all that was ruined by a mistake Yasmine made. Paige and Yasmine were at a school dance, when
I found the book to be easy, exciting reading because the story line was very realistic and easily relatable. This book flowed for me to a point when, at times, it was difficult to put down. Several scenes pleasantly caught me off guard and some were extremely hilarious, namely, the visit to Martha Oldcrow. I found myself really fond of the char...
Everyone has a secret life that they keep hidden from the rest of the world. Lies are told on a daily basis in order to keep these lives stashed in the dark. In The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the bees are the ones that have the most secret life of all. They each have their own specific role to play deep within the hive. It's obvious that the author had meant for some of her characters to portray the roles that these buzzing insects have to dutifully fulfill every duty. Lily and Zach are the field bees, August is a nurse bee, and the Lady of Chains is the Queen bee.
I would recommend this book to people who love realistic stories. Personally for me it is hard to find books that interest me and this one felt like if I was watching someone else's life while I read it. It has so many interesting points. When you think something might happen
The Book I chose to do for my book report is Live Original By: Sadie Robertson. She is one of the daughters of the Robertson Family, also known as the Duck Commander (Duck Dynasty) family. This book that she wrote is about how the duck commander teen keeps it real and stays true to her values. The Robertson family is a Christian family that lives in Louisiana, and they make products for people who hunt ducks. The show is a reality TV show, they have become really wealthy but they owe it all to God, and they trust in him completely. They have had many trials, one of the trials they faced was being asked not to pray before meals on the TV show, but there was no way they would agree to that. They have put their faith before fame and that’s something that’s really important. Sadie Robertson is 18 years old, and currently a senior in High School and graduates in 2016.
“The Queen Bee in the Corner Office” by Olga Khazan is an article many working women can relate to. From various jobs I have had, it is safe to say every working woman has at least encountered a “Queen Bee”. From high school we know a queen bee usually consists of being the prettiest girl in school; wearing the trendiest clothes; knowing all the hot gossip; and having the hottest boyfriend. According to Khazan (2017), in a work setting, the queen bee consists of three characteristics; the aggressive bitch, passive-aggressive bitch, and the tuned out, indifferent bitch. The aggressive bitch is a high ranking woman at a firm who usually verbally assaults anyone. A passive-aggressive bitch tends to be two-faced and has her “subtle,semi-rude emails”
The predominant symbols found in The Secret Life of Bees contributed greatly to the structure of the literature. The development of the writing’s structure, shown through increased emotional appeal and conflict description, was directly related to the usage of symbolism within the story. The passage reads, “‘They had all these little fish they’d caught fastened onto a stringer. They held me down on the bank and hooked it around my neck, making it too small to pull over my head,’” (Kidd 229). One of the symbols present in the text is a necklace of fish that Lily was forced to wear as a child. The necklace summarized the intricate issues that Lily was dealing with in her present life. The issues were like a tight necklace that could not be
Grief leaves an imprint on those who experience it. Some can survive its deep sorrow, others cannot. In The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, she explores the effect of grief on the main characters. The novel opens with fourteen-year-old Lily Owns struggling with the knowledge that her mother was dead because she, as an infant, picked up a loaded gun and accidentally shot her. She runs away from her abusive father in search for answers of who her mother was. Lily hitchhikes to Tiburon, South Carolina; the location written on the back of an image of the Black Madonna – one of the only belongings she has of her mother’s. There, she finds a pink house inhabited by the Boatwright sisters who are African American women making Black Madonna honey. The Boatwright sisters have had their share of grief with the death of two of their sisters and the racial intolerance they face despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Boatwright sisters and Lily Owens have different methods of coping with grief; internalizing, ignoring, and forgetting are some of the ways they cope, with varying degrees of success. They discover that they must live past their grief, or else it will tear them apart.
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.
Bold, authentic, and compelling are a few words to describe Sue Monk Kidd’s piece, The Secret Life of Bee’s. This novel transports the reader to the summer of 1964 in the South, with the perspective of the changing 14-year-old Lily Owens. This young lady lives with her egocentric detestable father, her loving colored caretaker, and the taunting memory of her mother's death. Lily is a shy, friendless, and fearful girl who loves reading and writing. Nevertheless, she longs to be popular and loved. But it all starts to change when she got the courage to run away from her father, and breakout her stubbornly brave caretaker, Rosaleen, who had been incarcerated. Lily and Rosaleen find themselves in Tiburon, South Carolina living in a pink honey farm that belongs to three colored Boatwright sisters; August, June, and May. They take part of a group called the Daughters of Mary. After spending some time with them and several tragic incidents, Lily comes clean about her identity and asks about her mother, Deborah, who had been a part of their group. The truth about her mother hurt but with the help from the Boatwright sisters and the Daughters of Mary, Lily's feelings of loneliness and
“I’d been kneeling on grits since I was six, but still I never got used to that powdered-glass feeling beneath my skin,” (Kidd 24). In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens has a difficult childhood living with her ruthless father on a peach farm in South Carolina. Additionally, Lily has never escaped her terrifying past that she experienced when she was a little girl, the experience of killing her mother. Thus, throughout her life Lily’s only mother figure has been a fearless colored woman named Rosaleen. Eventually trouble arises, and Lily and Rosaleen flee to Tiburon, South Carolina, a city on the back of Lily's mom’s things, in search of a loving family. In Tiburon, they were unexpectedly accepted in by the Boatwright sisters, who are colored beekeepers. After losing her mother, internal remorse, dishonesty, and remission will allow Lily to see what she is missing most in her life. In The Secret Life of Bees, the symbols Tiburon, Mary , and the Queen Bee allows the reader to discover the theme of finding love in unexpected places with unexpected people.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a realistic fiction novel that tells the story of Lily Owens, a 14 year old girl living in South Carolina, in 1964 with her father; T. Raye, and her housekeeper, Rosaleen. Lily and Rosalyn get into an argument with a couple white men. Rosaleen pours her chew on one of the white men because of their obscure comments. Times being how they were in 1964 Rosaleen was put in jail for spitting on a white man. Lily decides she needs to break Rosaleen out. I will present to you the main character’s personality, the main idea of this novel, and how I personally related to the main character.
In the novel “The Secret Life of Bees”, which is surprisingly not an informative book talking about bees, the main character Lily Owens is set out to be the victim because of her parents. The novel first tells the reader that Lily accidently kills her mother when she was a toddler, and goes on to explaining how her father, whom she calls T-Ray, is an abusive man. He punishes Lily very often in many ways, like making her kneel in grits and speaking to her in an offensive manner. We later find out that Lily’s mother, Deborah, suffers from depression, partly because of the dominance coming from T-Ray, and learn the harsh truth of her leaving Lily. The author, Sue Monk Kidd, gives the vision of T-Ray being a bad father and Deborah being an ethical
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is the story of a fourteen-year-old girl named Lily, who runs away from her abusive father with her housekeeper to the town that her late mother had once been to. There, she meets August and the Boatwright sisters, who live in a bright pink house and own a bee farm. These women teach her all about life through bees and the black Mary statue that is kept in their house. Lily comes from a rough situation, surrounded by negativity, but the sisters take her in and teach her what family and love is. Although living in a world where, for her, love is scarce, Lily is able to learn from the all negatives in her life, which then turn into positives, and Lily is a better person because of what she learned.
Lily has a lot of mother figures in her life. In ?The Secret Life of Bees? two mother figures that she has are Rosaleen and August. A mother cares for her young and guides them trough life. She comforts and soothes them when they need it. Lily?s Mothers are Rosaleen and August. Both act as mothers for Lily in different ways.