Lily In The Secret Life Of Bees

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak. ”-Thomas Carlyle. In the novel Secret Life of Bees, Lily is a harmless, kind hearted girl who has experienced much in the short life she has lived. The last time Lily has felt kindness, gentleness, and love was when her mother was alive. “People who think dying is the worst thing don’t know a thing about life (2).”

Lily’s insecurity is displayed through her actions in school when encountering the more popular girls, “I started picking scabs off my body and, when I didn’t have any, gnawing the flesh around my fingernails until I as a bleeding wreck” (Kidd 9). For instance, Lily’s act of shying away from others and picking at her scabs helped to emphasize her discomfort when people she considered her betters, in style at least, surrounding Lily and reminding her about her own less than satisfactory personal looks. Furthermore, her self-consciousness, along with her inborn daringness led her to run away from home, and take Rosaleen with her. In brief, the lack of parental guidance for Lily led her to be slightly unstable, and embarrassed about herself in general led her to run away from home, and the instability caused her to start stealing and lying.

The Secret Lives of People The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, is an interesting story that connects human lives to bees. The story takes place in 1964 during the Civil Rights Movement and fourteen year-old Lily Owens leaves her abusive father and her home in Sylvan, South Carolina to go to Tiburon with hopes to find information on her mother. Throughout the story, Lily struggles with many internal conflicts and also meets several mother figures along the way.

Family and systems around oneself can impact him or her greatly. In The Secret Life of Bees, the two different family structures, one with a single father and the other with four loving strangers, have impacted Lily, an adolescent, differently. As Lily develops to become more vocal and independent, she goes against the orders by her father who (she believes) never cared for or loved her. Throughout Lily’s life, she unknowingly experienced so many things and learned so many important life lessons- that she is slowly heading towards self-determination where she does not depend on her father anymore.

In the novel Secret Life of Bees there are many characters with interesting backgrounds and unique characteristics. They each serve a purpose in the book to support the main character, push the character in a certain direction, and send a message to the readers. The character in the novel of Secret Life of Bees that Kidd makes me particularly admire is August Boatwright. August breaks the stereotype of black women in the South during this period. She lives in her own home with her two sisters and runs a successful business.

“Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance” -Samuel Johnson. This quote encompasses one of the underlying and pivotal concepts that I have learned this semester. This is the idea of perseverance. Perseverance has various forms and it shows up in every single book we have read this semester. I think that this quality is crucial to progress in both physical and spiritual life.

“Daddy!” Most often, this is a proclamation of joy, a child announcing happiness toward their father. However, in Secret Life of Bees, a novel brilliantly written by Sue Monk Kidd, this is a cry of despair, a plea for one’s life. This stirring story is the tale of a young white girl, Lily, who with her black nanny named Rosaleen, runs away from home in search of secrets and a better life. Although often portraying events similarly, the book occasionally contrasts the film, which lends itself to the fact that various techniques are necessary when using different mediums.

The search for independence can be a tedious task and individuals may go their whole lives looking for it and being unable to find it. This is true for that of Lily Bart in The House of Mirth written by Edith Wharton. Lily is not content with the life she now lives and craves an independent lifestyle where she does not have to rely on others for social and financial support. Yet by further analyzing the text Lily’s search for independence leads to her ultimate demise.

Imagine that you are a child, trapped in an abusive house, and that there is no way to improve the potion you are in right now. Envision a tunnel of darkness where there is only fear with no sense hope. An indirect characterization of Lily, the protagonist, a symbolism of a wall that helps Lily cope with her emotions, and an illusion to a biblical event that changed the course of Lily’s life are incorporated throughout Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees to convey a message of hope. In particular, these literary devices are included throughout the novel to convey that a person is always capable of improving their quality of life.

"There is nothing perfect," August said from he doorway. There is only life". This is what I believe, is the most important sentence of the story The secret Life of Bees. This sentence appears at the end of Chapter 12, on page 256. I consider this is the best sentence in the story as it genuinely helps Lily understand that there is no such thing as perfection.

The Secret Life of Bees was written by Sue Monk Kidd. It's an emotional story about a little girl in search of her mothers past, but along the way she discovers herself and who she really is. It's based in 1964 in South Carolina. A little girl named Lilly runs away from her abusive father to follow her mothers footsteps in order to discover her past. After escaping from her father, Lilly and Rosaleen(Lilly's nanny) came across a general store.

During a time period of social injustices Lily, the main character in Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, inserts herself into the home of a family of African American sisters to uncover the mystery surrounding her mother. Because of Lily's young age when her mother dies, as she gets older she has an obession of trying to figure out who her mother really was. She has little recollection of the time they spent together and one day she comes across a picture with the words "Tiburon S.C" on the back. This is the moment her real journey begins. Lily sets off to finds this place her mom has visited to discover new things about her mom, but what she actually does is learn about herself.

Casey is in a situation that is very tough to judge. If I were in the position to suggest something to Casey I would tell her to befriend Mariah and defy the odds. Anyone can be in the same position as Mariah. As a person that has been that oddball or person that people don’t want to hang around, the best way to break someone out of that is just to simply talk to them. Casey might be surprised and even amazed at some of the things that Mariah has seen, experienced or thought of.