The Secret Life Of Bees Theme Essay

In the novel by Sue Monk Kidd,The Secret Life of Bees, discusses the internal conflict of a young girl named Lily. When Lily finds her true identity she transforms into a strong and confident women which helps her face the world and all of its challenges. Lily from the beginning of the novel she felt as if she was” impersonating a girl instead of really being one”(9).This shows how Lily tried acting and doing all the things that girls really do instead of being one. In the middle of the novel Lily gets to Tiburon and when she first gets there she goes into the store and asks about the picture and leaves but leaves with a bottle of snuff without paying. This shows how Lily is changing and not acting the way she did before she left Sylvan.

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

Secret Life of Bees Essay “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd explores the way of life through the metaphor of a bee’s. Bees represent people and their lives within a home that no one may notice. A range of characters are developed throughout the story from a young girl who escapes a troubled home to a black woman who leads a honey company during the Civil Rights Movement. However, the character I particularly admire is May, a black woman who cares for all creatures while dealing with severe depression.

On the first page of the novel, “The Secret Life of Bees” the Heroine of the book, Lily Owens, declared that, “my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit,” (page 1) we as readers have no clue whatsoever what she is talking about. Lily seems like a child with a normal life but that can easily be proven wrong; at the age of four she happen to kill her mother without knowing it and has a father in which can be a bit brutal at times. Despite everything, Lily is a lady who loved to learn things about her mother every chance she got, it was clear she had love for Deborah, no doubt, even if she didn’t have any memories of her. An example that perfectly demonstrates this is the argument Lily and T. Ray had: Lily declared that Deborah wouldn’t

She is now 15 and ½ years old. Her mother reports she would also like to begin Lily on ‘the pill’, because “I don’t want her getting pregnant young like I did”. Lily denies any concerning symptoms and she denies interest in contraception. Lily will be a sophomore. She expresses angst at starting a new school and leaving her friends for the recent move.

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.

The author of the Secret Life of Bees chose to use Lily, the young white female protagonist on the precipice of adulthood, in order to better tell this story. Lily serves the role as narrator, and we see the story through her eyes – providing a unique insight that no other character in the story would give, being an outsider in Tiburon, as well as her journey of self-discovery that is at the core of this book. Several passages of the book would have been changed through a different perspective, such as when Lily overhears June and August arguing over her arrival. By changing the point of view away from Lily, you lose her confusion and “righteous indignation” over being turned away due to “being white” (Bees 87), something that she has never

Scout and Lily Compare and Contrast Essay Both Scout, from To KIll a Mockingbird and Lily, from The Secret Life of Bees uphold their beliefs regarding race and personal prejudices in their own pieces of literature. Although these stereotypes belong to two different characters, some similarities can be found between them as well. Lily and Scout have had different ranges of exposure to African Americans, however they both eventually developed mature thoughts involving race and represented strong female characters in the midst of male-dominated societies. Scout and Lily were both constantly considering and believing what they heard regarding African Americans from their guardians and classmates at the beginning of each novel.

“They were pure and innocent—something that wasn’t often found in this world of greed, disgrace, and self-gratification” (Preston 88). Clover often thought of the girls in his cellar as flowers; his mother taught him that flowers were pure and beautiful, and that is what he wanted his family to be similar too. One night, Summer Robinson is walking alone in the dark, something her crazy-hot-protective boyfriend ☺ always tells her not to do. She suddenly hears and sees a man walking toward her saying “Lily”, and he soon calls her Lily. Because of this, Summer feels uneasy and tries to find an escape route; the man kidnaps her and brings her to his cellar.

Lily barely knew her own mother, and T. Ray, her father, abuses her and could care less. Lily gets to experience the parent-child love from Rosaleen. Kidd asserts that the interaction between different races can lead to loving

As orated in the quotation above, by August to Lily the Mary of Chains serves as a great object of growth for Lily to find her own inner strength and to be her own mother. In The Secret Life of Bees Lily struggles to find and connect with her mother throughout the novel. Lily continues to look at her past and dwell upon the fact that she doesn’t have a mother, and because of that Lily goes to great lengths to find out whatever she can about her mother.

“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.

Sue Monk Kidd presents Lily’s insecure personality in her novel The Secret Life of Bees to convince the audience to see Lily in an innocent light. Kidd desires to portray Lily as innocent to justify her running away from T. Ray and her home. An excerpt from the onset of the book reveals Lily’s insecurity: “There was nothing worse than clumps of whispering girls who got quiet when I passed. I started picking scabs off my body and, when I didn’t have any, gnawing the flesh around my fingernails till I was a bleeding wreck”(9). As one analyzes this portion of the book, Lily convinces herself that she does not care what the others think about her.

Mental Illness affects an immense amount of individuals no matter their race, culture or age. It is everywhere we go, yet still an issue some choose to ignore; whether it is the person facing the illness or those around them. People handle their sickness in a variety of ways. Some by using violence as their only answer, others run away from their issue and majority choose to accept and make the best of it. After reading the novel The Secret Life of Bees, it would be easy to think that the main theme is discrimination or family, but in reality it is actually focused on the toll that mental illness takes on a family.

Unlike the three ladies we must think about the consequences of our actions, especially when we are making decisions for others. Lily no matter if she had a disability was still human and deserved to be happy and not sent off to a place where she would be lonely and possibly sad. Ellisville could have been a special institute to help these “feeble-minded” people but as it was mentioned in the story it had over crowding and it just seemed like it wouldn’t be the best place for young Lily to be at. The biggest significance of the story was that the ladies finally in the end realize the mistake they are making by sending Lily to Ellisville and that Lily received that happiness and got the chance to what she wanted to do with her life, which was getting