“A wonderful novel about mothers and daughters and the transcendent power of love” (Connie May Fowler). This quote reflects the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd because the protagonist in the story, Lily Owens, her mother have died when she was four years old and she didn’t feel loved by her abusive father, T. Ray Owens, until she met the Boatwrights family with the housekeeper, Rosaleen, and stayed with them. The Boatwrights family are the three black sisters who are August, May, and June. This novel took place in Sylvan and Tiburon, South Carolina, where Lily grew up and where she found the answer to her questions. When Lily Owens was four years old, her mother died and she have always blamed herself for it throughout the …show more content…
It has so much combinations of wonderful characters, principles, moments, scenes, and words. One thing that I also liked about the story was the little facts that was mentioned about the bees. The bees actually played an important part of the book because almost all of the main characters and Lily’s situations can be compared to one of the bees who go and collect honeys. Bees also do work or do chores just like what humans do. My favorite part of the book is when it showed forgiveness at the end of the of the story when Lily and her father talked, and also when she stays at Tiburon with the Boatwrights family because she finally has mothers that will take care and love …show more content…
Her major themes are motherhood, the transference of misery, dependence, bees as an example of human society, and race relations. Motherhood is totally one her major theme because the protagonist only wants to understand her true mother and wants to know if her she really loved her. Also, I like how one of the theme is the race relations in American history because Kidd pictured the life during the time in the setting. In addition, I feel like I relate to August because I would also want to help others who is needing it and believes something good will happen, always being
Chapter 1 The five aspects of a quest are: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there. A book that uses the aspects of a quest very nicely is the secret life of bees. (a) The quester in this story is a young girl named lily owens who fights with her father and does not have a mother because lily accidently shot her when she younger.
Lily longs for the truth about her mother and finds that truth is hiding in Tiburon South Carolina. She is painfully aware that her father might come and take her back to the horrible life she used to live. However she learns that the bees are free, that they live and rely on each other, and she tries to be free and happy like them. Lily soon discovers and comes to terms with her mother’s past, learns about beekeepers and is happy that she can now trust people and have friends that are like
Bees are a mysterious species who have an incredible life that we know nothing about; in connection we live crazy, mysterious, lives with ups and downs; goods and bads. The secret life of bees by Sue Monk Kidd is an extraordinary story about a teenager Lily Owens, her abusive father, her mother, and numerous friends. Lily lost her mother at a young age, so she runs away; she ends up living with a loving family of women and finds mothers within them. She learns about friendships, overcoming, forgiveness, and love. In The secret Life of Bees the author shows theme through conflict and symbolism.
After Lily confesses to August that Lily was the one who killed her mom, Lily says, “You will hear a dark whispering spirit, a voice coming from the center of things. It will have blades for lips and will not stop until it speaks the one secret thing at the heart of it all… It said, You are unlovable, Lily Owens.” (Kidd 242). Lily created the dark spirit.
By forgiving, Lily understands that everyone is human, and even though her mother isn’t in her presence, she will always love her. By telling the truth to August and opening up about her emotions, Lily Owens proves to mature from a hesitant, questioning teen to an understanding young
The setting of a story can vastly affect a story. A horror story is a lot different if it’s set on a park instead of a old haunted house. The Secret life of Bees is set in South Carolina during 1964.In 1964 the civil rights movemant was slowly winding down as African Americans got rights but the tensions where still there. In The Secret Life of Bees the setting has a huge effect on the plot because Zach gets captured because he is with lily, May commits suicide becuase he is always so sad from all the african americans geting killed and hurt, and lily and rosaline run away because they don 't want to get hurt.
Lily seems to have a happy ending. The story ends “happily ever after”, the problem is solved right away. Lily’s life became bliss once she lets everything go. Lily was able to forgive herself and both of her parents. and as a result was blessed with a beautiful life filled with the love that she so needed and deserved.
Lily soon learned to accept killing her mother and to move on from it. Lily never truly hated herself over what had happened even though sometimes it seemed like it. She learned to be content with herself and not to care what others think. She didn’t even care when people saw her with Zach in public even though it was totally against people’s beliefs at that time “Becca and I watch for Zach in the lunchroom and sit with him every chance we get. We have reputations as “black lovers,” which is how it is put to us” (Kidd 301).
One of the themes presented by Sue Monk Kidd in, “The Secret Life of Bees” is pushing boundaries. In the book, Lily runs away from her abusive father and stays at a beekeepers house where she would be safe. This beekeepers house is a black family and while she stayed there and everyone was constantly pushing boundaries. The story relates to the article written by Nadra Kareem Nittle which was called, “How the Freedom Riders Movement Began”. This article was about a group of people called freedom riders traveling together to end the Jim Crow laws or other known as, racist laws.
“The gun on the floor. Bending to pick it up. The noise that exploded around us. This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted.
Although Lily is young, she feels that she has the right to make this statement because she has already experienced so much in her life. With that being said, people may judge Lily because of what she says or does but that is because not everyone knows about
In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd incorporates the literary technique of allusion to assist the reader in delving into Lily’s thought process. Furthermore, to incorporate allusion, Kidd compares the message Lily interpreted from the arrival of the bees in her room to the plagues God sent to the pharaoh Ramesses. Lily ponders: Back in my room on the peach farm, when the bees had first come out at night, I had imagined they were sent as a special plague for T. Ray. God saying, Let my daughter go, and maybe that’s exactly what they’d been, a plague that released me (151).
Every day bees are disappearing from their colonies at dangerously rapid rates. Everyone should become bee keepers and/or have bee gardens. It is the peoples’ duty to protect and save the bees. Bees play a major role in our everyday lives, and they go unnoticed. Without bees our food supply would quickly decrease.
Throughout The Secret Life of Bees bees play a recurring role in the novel, repeatably being mentioned during the novel in epigrams before the start of each chapter and within the story itself. Unfortunately, on certain occasions the reason why bees are included in a certain part of the story can be unclear and confusing to readers, causing them to occasionally misinterpret the importance of bees throughout the novel. Regardless, the bees throughout play a very important role in understanding many of the themes and symbolism that Kidd included within the novel. In The Secret Life of Bees Kidd symbolizes Lily’s experiences and situations through the bees frequently present in the novel to show that seemingly different things can function in the same way.
The book, The Secret Life of Bees, is a historical fiction novel written expertly by Sue Monk Kidd that encapsulates the emotional and physical journey of a teenage girl searching for her identity. Lily Owens, a fourteen year old girl from Sylvan, South Carolina, has an enormous emotional burden that no one her age should ever have to carry. Her mother, Deborah, died when Lily was four, leaving Lily with her abusive father, T. Ray, and just three items to remind Lily of the past: Deborah’s gloves, a picture of Deborah, and a strange wooden picture of a black Virgin Mary with the inscription “Tiburon, SC” written on the back. Little did Lily know, that picture would bring her a multitude of not only grief and pain, but answers as well. The address soon