In the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd It is shown throughout the novel Lily the protagonist has a complicated relationship with her mother.What makes their relationship complicated is the fact Lily doesn’t know much about her mother and any information no matter how insignificant it still matters to her.”My mother’s name was Deborah.I thought it was the prettiest name I have ever heard...Once I asked him(him being T.Ray her father) when her birthday wa or favorite icing she preferred.” This evidence portrays how desperate Lily is to know literally anything about her mother no matter how simple. Lily later on her journey to find more about her mother learns more about her mother . Though this information on her makes Lily no longer
Lily's creativity, activated by religious observance, allows her to be more creative. Later on in the passage, when Lily describes her outward expression, she notes that “[She] wanted to cry, but in the next instant, [she] wanted to laugh” (Kidd 71). Through the use of juxtaposition, Kidd carries out an image of Lily about to sob until she suddenly starts chuckling. By using the diction of “cry” and “laugh,” two words that completely differ in emotion, Kidd shows that the religious statue made her recall events of her past, truly making her analyze the type of person she was. Religion allowed her to have the trait of being self-aware allowing her to forgive herself for her past and move on because she knew that the religious statue could see good in her.
Symbolism: ‘The Secret Life Of Bees’ “Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open.” (Kidd, 41). Just like the bees escaped the jar, Lily has to, in able to find her freedom. Lily Owens, the main character, is living with an abusive father, who won’t let her out of her ‘jar’ (home). ‘The Secret Life Of Bees’ is set in 1964, during the Civil Rights Movement.
Easier said than done, Lily questions what it truly means to analyze a toxic relationship from the outside. As emotions are high, Lily truly begins to think about the common factors of abuse and questions why the victim is to be blamed for staying instead of the fact that the abuser is taking advantage of the victim's emotions. What people don't tend to realize is, “The number of people affected is astronomical. Emotional abuse is
Lily’s mother is the cause of much of her grief, through her journey she imagines her mother in a way that does not accurately depict who her mother truly was. When she finds out what her mother actually was she, “I stood
(374) When Lily says this , she is realizing all the mother figures in her life and how important they are to her and how she needs them to shine over her like a moon. It is important for Lily to have as many mother figures in her life as she does since her actual mother died when she was young and she carries the guilt with her that is was her
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 chapter 14, Page 278 it says “When I woke up in the mornings, my first thought was the hat box. It was almost like my mother herself was hiding under the bed. Sue Monk Kidd is making the connection between Lily and her mother by making the character feel like her mother is around her at times. This also creates a
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.
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
Before this point in the book, I did not think that Lily, Tia, and Ashley were going to have to give themselves up. In order to save everyone they had to become Warset. This is a very big deal because Lily had been the protagonist and the protagonist usually lives to the end of the book. It is important that Lily did not know this a the beginning of the book. If she did know in the beginning, Lily would not be able to do everything to work up to that point.
Continuing, another theme that led us through Lily’s adventure of growing up was her discovering how important storytelling was. She was going through gruesome horrid things, and when she read things like Shakespeare she realized how important it was because it helped her escape to a fantasy world for a little bit of time. Lastly, Lily learns the power of the female community. Lily grew up without a mother, so for a large chunk of her life she didn’t know the real power the female community held.
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
“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.
Also, because she “whispered”, it adds emphasis to the quote by adding a sense of defeat and vulnerability in her tone. It is shown that Lily wants to know the reason why her mother abandoned her unveiling the amount of emotion caused by her mother’s abandonment. These examples of tone help the reader have a
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.