The Secret Life Of Bees Literary Analysis

(Kidd, 294), shows Lily as she is about to be thrown back into her ‘jar’, just like the

Have you ever thought about what your mother means to you? Have you ever wondered what life would be like without her? In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd writes about a young Lily Owens living in Sylvan, South Carolina the mid 1960’s with her abusive father T. Ray and her housekeeper Rosaleen. Lily is fourteen years old and has grown up with the guilt of accidentally shooting and killing her mother when Lily was only four years old. Lily has many questions about her mother but doesn’t know where to begin looking for the answers.

Introduction In the novel, “The Secret Life of Bees,” written by Sue Monk Kidd an important character who showed maturity and took significant action in her life was Lily. We see this when (1) she leaves home and (2) moves in with the Boatwright sisters and, at the end of novel, (3) challenging her father and making the decision to become a permanent part of the Boatwright community. We see Lily begin to trust her own instincts and have the courage to forgive herself as she grows under the care of the Boatwright sisters. Lily leaving home was an important action she took that shows maturity on her part. This action showed that she was both stable minded enough and grown up to be able to make a concious decision about a life-altering aspect

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.

Throughout the novel, June and Lily bonded and became closer friends. They helped each other get over their inclinations toward people with the same skin color. May and June nurtured Lily, and made her a more amiable and unprejudiced

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

Lastly, Lily finally builds up the courage to stand up to her father. She does this by saying, “I said I’m not leaving” (296). For Lily’s whole life, she was blamed for her mother’s death especially by her father. He is a terrible father to her because he mentally and physically abuses her, and makes her feel

The Secret Life of Bees begins with fourteen-year-old Lily Owens who is reflecting back on the summer and all of the growth and change that she made as time progressed. The novel starts of by introducing her home which is a peach farm in the town of Sylvan, South Carolina where she lives with her abusive and ignorant father T. Ray Owens. Lily lost her mother when she was four years old, and every since she has not felt right in the world as though something has been taken away from her life. Thus, she always has flashbacks of her mother Deborah Fontanel Owens. The last memory she carries of her mother was the day she passed away.

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 beginning of the book we knew nothing about her mother. Mostly about how T- ray is the meanest man in the world. In the novel lily said that he wouldn’t let her read or have fun. What she had to do was help him work his peach farm all day. Lily also said that she hated him for telling her that her mother didn’t love her.

Rosaleen aided Lily in finding her way to August. August helped Lily learn life skills and more about her mother. Lastly, June’s resentment towards Lily helped her because it represents the resentment of the

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

Lily says, “And there they were. All these mothers. I have more mothers than any eight girls off the street” (298). Then Lily says, “ I remember the sight of them standing there waiting. All these women, all this love, waiting” (299).

“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.

In this passage, Kidd characterized Lily as immature, and a primary trace of this characterization can be spotted at the very beginning of the passage, where Lily questions “How dare she? How dare she leave me? I was her child.” (Kidd 259). The interrogative syntax in this monologue suggests that Lily is still confused as to why her mom left her, even after August spent time explaining it to her.