In the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, August and Rosaleen are extremely different in their upbringing and the way it affects them. Due to the knowledge she gained growing up, August is “so intelligent, so cultured” (78), while Rosaleen’s limited education makes it so she could “get some manners” (75). August has a lot more academic knowledge and understanding of what to do in social situations than Rosaleen due to her education and upbringing. Rosaleen came from a poorer family and didn’t have as an extensive education as August did. Another way that Rosaleen and August are different is that August is “the woman who makes the Black Madonna Honey” (68) while Rosaleen “worked as one of [T. Ray’s] pickers” (2).
Lily ending up at her mother’s previous home was so unlikely, nearly impossible. In the real world, Lily would not have been accepted into their home so easily either. In conclusion, some parts of “The Secret Life of Bees” probably would not occur in the real
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a book about a lost girl, who only seeks to learn more about her mother by traveling to the place she truly believes she will find answers, Tiburon, South Carolina. Her journey to find her long-awaited answers begins with her father and ends with August, the oldest of the Boatwright sisters. She hears various stories all of which form an idea in Lily’s mind of who her mother was. Of course, there were some details that Lily didn’t want to hear, but it was apart of her journey. Each and every single answer that she receives is unique and describes who Deborah was in different ways.
“Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.” (Snicket). When someone is struggling or feeling distress, that person will most likely make another person feel the same way.
In The Secret Life of Bees, the author, Sue Monk Kidd, alludes to the Freedom Summer Murders to create a conflict to start the rising action of the plot. In Mississippi in 1964, civil rights workers attempted to prepare and register African American to vote. In the novel, the radio broadcasters were discussing current events including the following: “...how police were looking for the bodies of those three civil rights workers in Mississippi…” (166). In the beginning of the story, Rosaleen heads to register herself to vote, but on her way, a few white men harass her about her skin color and her size. She then spits on one of the men, who in turn, start to beat her.
In The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd indirectly characterizes Lily as ambitious in order to contrast with the traditional ‘Southern Belle’ image. The general opinion in Lily’s hometown is that girls should grow up to be either beauticians or school teachers, instead of pursuing challenging careers. Initially, Lily herself believes she is bound only for beauty college until one of her teachers realizes Lily’s potential and tells her that going to beauty college would be a waste for such intelligence. This comment from her teacher changes Lily’s whole perspective on her future and causes her to profess that, “I can’t tell you how much I’d hated that question [about careers], but suddenly I was going around volunteering to people, people
In the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, racism plays a huge role in shaping the plot of the story. Though slavery has been illegal for 153 years and African Americans along with other minorities have full rights as American citizens today, racism is still alive and well in the American society. As supported by the Catholic Church, one of the most important Catholic Social Teaching was respect for the dignity of human life. This means that each human life is irreplaceable and should be treated with respect and compassion regardless of age, race, ethnicity, sex, and economic backgrounds. Since racism is defined in dictionary as prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief
Segregation has been a huge issue in our society since the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The battle between African Americans trying to become equal made our country split completely in half. Different rules and regulations were made for blacks to follow during school, work, and in other public places. The states further down South were very segregated and it also made it much harder for blacks to gain freedom. Many people viewed this time period through the phrase ‘love transcends race’.
Facts That Can Ruin a Relationship between Parents and Children In the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the writer tells a story of a young white girl facing challenges, struggling throughout her life, and trying to find out about the death of her mother. Sue Monk Kidd explains several different factors that can ruin a relationship between a parent and child, for example: the separation of a child from a father, when a father lies to his child and when there is no trust between them. To begin with, the relationship between a parent and a child can lead to separation from each other when there is not healthy interaction with each other or when there is not enough support from a father to a child.
In The Secret Life of Bees, a novel by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily starts off by just knowing that her mother wanted to leave T. Ray, but died before she could, however, by the end of the book, Lily gains a better understanding of what actually happened when her mother died. One night as Lily lay in bed, she imagines her mother forgiving her, and “she would kiss my skin till it grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame” (3). This suggests that lily thinks of her mother as a perfect, loving mother that wanted nothing more than to be with Lily and away from T. Ray. She also uses this fantasy of her mother to make herself feel better about killing Deborah. Later on in the book, Lily finally confides in August about her mother.
In the second chapter of, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the relationship between Lily and the people in her life, as well as, her understanding the society she lives in, becomes further explained. T-Ray brings Lily home from the police station, infuriated since Lily is questioning why they are not trying to save Rosaleen as well. T-Ray becomes worried that Lily will try and get Rosaleen out herself, so he tells her to stay at home and warns her not to leave the house. After seeing how Rosaleen stood up to the people who weren’t treating her fairly, Lily does the same, which leads to him trying to hurt her physically. Since he fails to hurt her physically, T-Ray tells her the reason as to why her mother was packing the day of her
In the Bildungsroman, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily, the young motherless protagonist, exists in a life which lacks love and care, but with an act of rebellion, alters the entire course of her life. After enduring cruel punishments from a sadist father, Lily accepts this as the way of life she must live. However, after a crucial moment, Lily begins to consider the idea of freedom from her oppressive life; she realizes this when she and Rosaleen, her substitute mother, come under arrest for disrupting the public and Terrence, her father, would only take Lily out of jail. This is a pivotal moment as Lily a heated conversation with her father and exclaims, “You don’t scare me”(Kidd 38). Her brash action to rebel against her father
The book “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd is a book about a fourteen-year-old white girl named Lily Owens who lives on a peach farm in Sylvan, South Carolina with her father T. Ray who is abusive and neglectful. Lily lives with a secret that many people do not know about, she believes she shot and killed, Deborah, her mother when she was just four years old. This memory has been haunting her for many years, and she would like to learn more about her mother. Ever since Deborah passed away, Rosaleen, Lily’s nanny, has been taking care of her. When the Civil Rights Act was signed, Rosaleen decided she would go and register to vote.
She later goes to jail for dumping her spit on some people who were being racist to her. Lily gets her out and they run away to Tiburon, South Carolina, the town that holds secrets of her mother. Bees symbolize Lily in many ways, ways you would probably not expect. One way bees are like Lily is bees can't work without their queen and Lily can’t work without her mother. She can’t look
In Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, the author alludes to a bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham to emphasize the terror that multiple characters, such as May, felt. In the novel, August clarifies the meaning of the wailing wall to Lily with one of the events that caused May’s sadness, “Birmingham, Sept 15, four little angels dead” (98). To further explain, the church in Birmingham had a large African-American congregation and served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Therefore, the Ku Klux Klan felt intimidated, so on September 15, they bombed the church and killed four little girls. So with the result of that, the Ku Klux Klan members hoped to scare African-Americans from trying to earn their civil rights.
