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The secret life of bees theme essay
Secret life of bees literary devices
The secret life of bees theme essay
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Leala Solomon
Ms. Bohan
Advanced World Literature
30 March 2015
Motherhood, Racism, and Bees in The Secret Life of Bees
“Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn't know a thing about life,” says Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees. This quote reveals that Lily, the main character in this novel, gains real wisdom. Later, Lily also gains a clear vision about the most important entities in life. Lily, with her new found wisdom, is ready to experience the real world, flaws and all. She does not only limit herself to anything- but also, she is ready for life’s dangers, endeavors, and in general, anything life throws at her. As she grows as an individual, her strength increases tremendously. This novel is narrated by fourteen year
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old Lily Owens, who spends her time throughout the book trying to remember her mother, fighting the little racism in herself, and growing strong like a bee. Looking for a new mother figure, and life away from home, Lily, along with Rosaleen, her surrogate mother, learn the meaning of family throughout the story plot. Together, they discover family can be found anywhere with anyone, even with those that you least expect it from. Family is anyone who truly loves and cares for you, regardless of blood relation. Written by Susan Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees includes themes such as motherhood, racism, and the bees’ hardwork in order to highlight the hard times that each of the characters face. Motherhood is the main principle of this novel.
At age four, Lily Owens accidentally kills her mother in an act to help her. As she was handing her mother a gun, her mother dropped it. The gun then backfired on her and kills Lily’s mom. Lily is clearly traumatized by this event. As soon as Lily enters the Boatwright home, she is overcome with motherly love. Raub writes, “Upon settling into her new life in Tiburon, Lily finds motherly love where she did not expect it” (Raub 1). Some love is received from Rosaleen and August and the rest from the Black Madonna. Lily is also well received by the black sisterhood. “Lily enters a loving, compassionate world of the feminine divine, a black sisterhood grounded in worship of the Black Madonna” (Hamilton and Jones 2). August, one of the Boatwright sisters, becomes a mother figure to Lily. August is not only a mother to her, but as well, her spiritual mentor in the book. The Boatwright sisters love her in different ways. August lets Lily to open up and cry to her like a mother would. The Black Madonna was a major idea and religious feature in The Secret Life of Bees. “The Black Madonna, a symbol of freedom and consolation, wraps her veil of protection over the oppressed African American women and the abused Lily in the pink house” (Hebb 2). Lily is raised a Baptist and has hardly ever heard of the Mother of God, who only appears at Christmas in the Protestant doctrine. By the end of the summer, she has experienced the truth about what …show more content…
August has been telling her: the divine Mother, the Black Madonna, goes into the holes life has gouged out of us (Gale Group "The Secret Life of Bees" 2). Once Lily settles into the nice town of Tiburon, the truth about her mother is slowly unraveled. Her mixed emotions reveal how she views her mother for a period of time. Lily, then, realizes that she never fully let go of all the emotions involving T. Ray (her father). All the women in this book play major roles. The women worship this “Black Madonna” and firmly situated in the black sisterhood of this “Black Madonna”. Lily finds love, protection, and family in the Boatwright sisters, people of Tiburon, the Black sisterhood, and the Black Madonna. Racism plays an important role in the setting and plot of The Secret Life of Bees. Lily must confront racial prejudice in herself several times. For instance, she is surprised that August is intelligent and Zach is handsome. Lily is completely shocked by her own attraction to an African-American boy (Gale Group "The Secret Life of Bees" 1). Lily is naive and does not understand the complexity of racism. Lily is very confused and shocked when she realizes her attraction to Zach. When she figures out that she is attracted to Zach, she retracts from him and distances herself. Lily’s relationship with Zach also pushed the lines set between whites and blacks (Raub 4). Zach breaks the racial boundaries and attends an all white high school (Raub 4). At first, Lily does not recognize herself as racist, but later, she does. When she enters the Boatwright home, she is surprised and caught off guard when August speaks eloquently and professionally. Surprised, Lily concludes that August is very smart and wise. At this moment in time, she realizes that she is racist. “Lily considers Rosaleen a member of their family despite her lack of biological relation to them” (Raub 4). This shows that Lily gets past the fact that Rosaleen is black and accepts her for who she is. Without Rosaleen, Lily would not be the girl that she grows to be. If Lily and her father had treated Rosaleen as most African-American people were treated in those days, the plotline would be very different. The bees hold one of the most pivotal roles in The Secret Life of Bees. The bees show Lily to manage her anger and her daily routine (Raub 2). Moreover, the bees teach about life impacting skill, like dependence and coping. Focusing on dependence, the bees show, through their actions, that one needs another person to fall back on and depend on in a good or bad time. Rosaleen and Lily are both dependent on each other and trust one another. “May seems to be the most dependent character in the novel due to the great pain that she bears. Yet, after she learns of Zach’s arrest, she begins to make independent decisions regarding her future. As an extreme example of this dependence, she ends up taking her own life” (Raub 2). May, another Boatwright sister, is very needy during the story. She always needs someone to be with her and it is shown why later in the book. Throughout the novel, all of the characters are forced to cope with difficulty. They cope with grief, discrimination, abuse, and physical pain. They all use different methods to cope, and no two characters take the same approach” (Raub 3). Lily has anger towards her parents, but she feels guilt, especially towards her mother, because she feels responsible for her mother's death. Eventually, Lily was not responsible for her mother’s death. There is no one in Lily's young world to help her bear or understand this kind of burden. (Gale Group "The Secret Life of Bees" 2). “Lily’s reflection seems to apply to her feelings about people, those who seem to work too hard and never stop. These ‘worker bee’ types live for their work and create quality work, but they often do not take the time to enjoy life” (Raub 2). Throughout the lives of bees, they produce great things but never have the time to appreciate what they do. This could be either the bees running out of time or just not needing to see their end results. The bees show healing in one’s life and their honey is the good that comes out when healing occurs. Healing is so strong that it can completely repair and mend one’s life and sorrows. In The Secret Life of Bees, one can learn the better and worse entities about life that could not be known if not for this novel.
Themes such as motherhood, racism, and the bees’ hardwork are included in The Secret Life of Bees,written by Susan Monk Kidd, in order to show and highlight the hard times that the each character faced. This novel highlights Lily’s path from a child to young adult. She now sees with more clarity in subjects of racism and her new family. Her path started innocent and uneducated and ended up being very whole and educated. In Lily’s growth throughout this novel, her trials and tribulations were shown. In The Secret Life of Bees, there are many words and phrases referenced and used that stay full of wisdom, courage, and female
empowerment.
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.
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.
People share their secret lives without even talking about them. It only takes a glance or feeling to see that others have faced similar situations and problems, some people even live parallel lives. Despite the fact that many people believe it impossible for a measly insect, like a bee, to know the pain hardships a human faces, Sue Monk Kidd proves them wrong with her book The Secret Life of Bees. In her novel she derives many of her characters from the types of bees that exist in a hive. Lily and Zach have characteristic 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 all to themselves.
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
Do you ever wonder how much you have changed in the past year? Not just physically, but in every aspect. Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd matures throughout the novel. Lily Owens matures because of her spiritual development. Also, she matures because of her social consciousness and her relationship with Zach. Sue Monk Kidd portrays the theme “coming of age” as difficult in The Secret Life of Bees.
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.
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.
This “home” that she finds brightly displays the ideas of identity and feminine society. Though Lily could not find these attributes with T. Ray at the peach house, she eventually learns the truth behind her identity at the pink house, where she discovers the locus of identity that resides within herself and among the feminine community there. Just like in any coming-of-age story, Lily uncovers the true meaning of womanhood and her true self, allowing her to blossom among the feminine influence that surrounds her at the pink house. Lily finds acceptance among the Daughters of Mary, highlighting the larger meaning of acceptance and identity in the novel. The meaning behind Sonsyrea Tate’s statement can be found deeply rooted within Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees.
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.
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.
In the book, Lily was narrating what she was feeling and thinking throughout the entirety of the book which added a lot of important elements that tied in the theme and importance of the bees in the development of the plot. This is an important difference because the movie seems to be missing some very important elements due to the absence of this narration. The title the Secret Life of Bees makes much less sense for the movie because the narration gives the reader an insight into how the bees contribute to the story. The movie seems to be more about the group of women becoming stronger together than the book because without this narration, it is harder to know how Lily is feeling. In contrast the book seems more about Lily’s journey because this narration is present explaining to the reader how Lily feels and what she thinks in each