Usually, food, water, and shelter comes to mind when people are asked to imagine the essentials of life. Although all of these are equally important, they are just the bare essentials a person needs in order to survive. In order to support a person’s well being and mold a pleasing future, parental involvement, a sometimes overlooked act, is just as important as the resources mentioned above. The lack of a caring and nurturing parent can lead to terrible consequences, which is exemplified by the character of Lily Owens in Sue Monk Kidd’s first novel, The Secret Life of Bees. Without a maternal figure to guide her and instead a neglectful father in her mother’s place, Lily’s life spirals out of control into a world full of low self-esteem and …show more content…
endless pain and suffering. Due to her father’s lack of compliments and approval, Lily has a difficult time understanding that she is a unique person worthy of praise.
Instead, she feels incapable of being like the other girls at her school, and therefore, each time Lily walks through the halls of her school, she always feels like the odd one out, the ugly duckling amongst the beautiful swans. Her anxiety becomes such a problem that she ends up reducing herself to nothing more than a “bleeding wreck” as an attempt to shield herself from the clusters of gossiping girls around her (9). Persisting in the notion that she is of little importance, Lily is shocked when her teacher tells her that Beauty School, an institution for the untalented, would be a waste of her “fine intelligence” (16). Due to the fact that she believes there are no other attainable life possibilities, such a revelation is so surprising that it takes her a whole month to get over it. Along with all the absurd ideas she puts in her head, it is inevitable for her to feel unlovable. Of course, her father poses the biggest influence of all, since he does not show any signs of appreciation or love towards her, but the rejection of the unfriendly girls at school proves momentous as well. As a result of such little to none parental guidance, Lily’s social life crumbles apart as she becomes a person of wasted
potential. In addition to her father’s demeaning ways is the neglectance that comes along with it. He rarely makes conversation with Lily, and whenever he does, it would usually be because he wants her to do a favor for him. Making matters worse, Lily’s father does not allow her to escape from reality through the beauty of books. As a result, Lily grows up having little knowledge of anything in particular regarding the outside world. When her African American nanny gets in trouble with some of the most racist white men in town, she is unable to understand the concept of racism that takes place between the four individuals and becomes hysterical over the situation. Not knowing much about racism in such a prejudiced town can lead to disastrous results, such as the worsening of Lily’s anxiety since she does not know how to deal with the problems of life yet. As well as having a hard time recognizing the racism in her community, Lily has a hard time making friends at school because her dismissive father has never taught her how to. Additionally, her father makes her feel and look like the odd one out by refusing to buy the clothes that she wants. Instead, he forces Lily to make “cotton print shirtwaists with crooked zippers and skirts hanging below [the] knees,” the highly unfashionable trend of her time. To make matters worse, Lily’s father secludes her from the outside world by refusing to grant her permission to go to any school related outings, including slumber parties and sock hops, where she would be given the chance make friends. As Lily is not well educated about the world around her, it is inevitable that she would stumble across obstacles that prohibited her from enjoying her life. If Lily had a caring and considerate parent, she most likely would not have had the low self-confidence and little knowledge that bad parenting brings. As ongoing research shows, parental involvement in a child’s life brings great benefits, including better social skills and greater knowledge on various subjects, both of which Lily is clearly lacking. Parental involvement is much needed in communities across the world because it helps better the next generation. Without it, the future may be filled with criminals and socially incompetent people, like the white men that assaulted Lily’s African American nanny. As it is the same with the case of Lily Owens, her father must step up and fill in his role as a parent, or Lily’s future will be dreary and filled with wasted potential.
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.
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.
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.
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 setting in the Secret life of bees helps set the overall structure of the book. As the setting changes, and certain events take place, so does the characters views on life. The most change seen is on Lily, the main character. Her values multiply and her perspective on cultural order shifts from one mind set to another. Although one part of the book’s setting limits the opportunities of the characters; the other part opens those and different opportunities. The setting in The Secret Life of Bees is vitally important because it impacts the main character and the people around her through events that transpire in the book.
Ruth, Elizabeth. “The Secret Life of Bees Traces the Growth of Lily’s Social Consciousness.” Coming of Age in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2013. 63-65. Print. Social Issues in Literature. Rpt. of “Secret Life of Bees.” The Globe and Mail 2 Mar. 2002: n. pag.
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. With an increase in familiarity, as she progresses her outlook on life changes with her. By the closure of The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens experiences passion, rage, joy, and sorrow in larger quantities than most teens her age. Amidst every trial transpires an improved
Within this world, people become self-governed after going through difficult times. In this novel, a fourteen-year-old white girl, Lily Owen’s, determination leads her to find contentment and another self-ruled woman, August Boatwright. After running away from home, Lily meets August and her two black sisters who maintain a large apiary to produce honey. Although some people work efficiently together, independent persons seek true happiness with their experiences as shown in the novel, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Throughout the novel, Lily and August prove the importance of independence by managing their lives and taking care of their loved ones.
Classics explore aspects of human identity and reveal how people struggle with mistakes and pain, how people realize their own childishness, and how to learn from mistakes. The Secret Life of Bees, set in the American South in 1964 amid racial unrest, tells story of Lily Owens, a white 14-year-old girl who is searching for the truth about her deceased mother. She lives on a peach farm with her cruel and abusive father, T. Ray, who tells Lily that she accidentally shot her mother, Deborah, when she was four. Lily accompanies the family’s black housekeeper, Rosaleen, to town to register to vote. Taunted by white men, she spills the contents of her snuff jar on their feet, is beaten, taken to jail,
...inds love along the way. She makes rash decisions in bad situations, faces the truth that she has been avoiding, and finds her place in the world. While her journey takes some unexpected twists, Lily learns to make the best of what she has, and go for what she wants. She learns to move on from the past, and make a brighter future. But most importantly, Lily learns to accept that life is unpredictable and that by doing her best Lily is living life the way she wants to.
Forgiveness is described as a conscious and deliberate decision to let go of feelings of bitterness or revenge towards oneself or a person who has caused harm. Understanding the past can help see behind the pain and suffering and lead to forgiving and accepting oneself. In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees, Lily learns that forgiving others expedites the process of self-healing. By forgiving herself, Lily is able to recognize the guilt, hatred and pain she placed upon herself and put it behind her. In doing so, she made it possible to move on with her life and accept love from others. Lily’s understanding of her mother’s past helps her to forgive both herself and her mother for their actions.
What can we actively take part in to stop the collapse of bee colonies? Bees are such a vital part of our everyday agriculture production, however, colonies are diminishing before our eyes. Colony Collapse Disorder is a massive decrease of bees in hives and it is greatly affecting our crops because bees are not distributing the necessary amount of pollen to crops in order for them to grow the maximum, most nutritious produce possible. There are many solutions that may help CCD, such as banning neonics, urban beekeeping, and interbreeding honey bees with African killer bees. The most effective way to decrease CCD is by interbreeding honey bees with a stronger specie of bees labeled African killer bees.
All around the world honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate, according to the documentary Vanishing of the Honeybees. This film features two commercial bee keepers and their fight to preserve their bee numbers. David Hackenburg was the first commercial bee keeper to go public the bee population was decreasing. Approximately two billions bees have vanished and nobody knows the reason why. Honeybees are used all across America to help pollinate monoculture crops like broccoli, watermelon, cherries, and other produce. Without the honeybees the price for fresh and local produce would be too much money. According, to this film commercial bee keeper’s help fifteen billion dollars of food get pollinated by commercial
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,