Mental Illness In The Secret Life Of Bees

Lily arrives at the Boatwright sisters house and sees the statue of the black Mary for the first time. While she is viewing the black Madonna, she gets mixed feelings of hating herself and adoring herself and begins to feel guilt. “Everything about that smile said, Lily Owens, I know you down to the core. I felt she knew what a lying, murdering, hating person I really was. How I hated T. Ray, and the girls at school, but mostly myself for taking away my mother”(71).

Many factors are present in this type of question and is demonstrated within the novel. During the hardships of Lilys abuse, she constantly wonders what other people would think of her in terms of staying, especially after finding out that she is pregnant by claiming, “She'll pity me. Shell wonder why I never left him. She'll wonder how I let myself get to this point. She’ll wonder all the same things I used to wonder about my own mother when I saw her in my same situation.

Her mother died when she was 4, and Lily was the one to kill her. Her dad, T-Ray, was a terrible parent to her too, because he hit her. She also have to live with the guilt that she ended her mother’s life. “There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful.” a quote by August, page 50.

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.

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.

By: Sue Monk Brianna Smith In the Secret Life of Bees by: Sue Monk, the main character, Lilly is a fourteen year old girl who lives with her father and their housekeeper, Rosaleen. Lilly’s mother died when she was younger, and she didn’t remember much about her. There are many sections in the book where Lilly felt unhappy because she didn’t have a mother like other girls her age. Lilly stated, “The gun shining like a toy in her hand, how he snatched it away and waved it around.

The Secret Life of Bees One of the greatest cruelties one can do upon another is to rob them of their human rights. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd takes place during the fight for civil rights in the United States. One theme presented in the novel would be one should not discriminate or make assumptions about another person due to the color of their skin. The cruelty presented in this novel was the robbing of human rights of blacks, which revealed the true nature of“The Daughters of Mary” of how they were going to raise Lily to be as the society they wanted to see.

In the bildungsroman, a coming of age novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the mother figure theme is prevalent. The protagonist, Lily, has lost her mother and lives with T. Ray, her abusive father. Because she endures the cruelty of T. Ray, she is not satisfied with living without a mother. She has different motherly figures who embrace and love her: August Boatwright, Rosaleen, and Mother Mary were the figures that helped shape her and while they could not replace her mother, they certainly filled the “hole” in Lily’s life. August Boatwright, one of the Calendar sisters who cares for her younger sisters, helps Lily mature and teaches her acceptance for everyone hen Lily and her maid Rosaleen went to Tiburon, South Carolina in

Vanessa Martino Ms. Oliverio ENG 3U1 17 December 2015 CPT Essay The Piano Man’s Daughter Timothy Irving Frederick Findley Asignificant author often leaves an impact on the reader or some sort of lesson to be learned by the end of the novel. Upon reading the novel The Piano Mans Daughter authored by Timothy Findley, I personally learned many lessons and found many events to be relatable to the struggles and lives of the modern teen. Timothy is a significant Canadian author as his personal struggle enables him to address human struggle in an authentic way.

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

The conflict between Lily and the ladies started right off at the beginning of the story when they discuss the letter that Mrs. Carson received from the feeble-mined institution in Ellisville, where they want to send Lily.

From the start of the book, readers learn about the neglect and behavior of the alcoholic father, Rex. Some of his behavior is explained when the family stays with Rex’s mother, Erma, in his hometown of Welch. You quickly learn how cold Erma is, and how creepy she is. When the parents

“What the three ladies infer about Lily Daw” In the story “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies”, we are introduced to our three ladies who are: Mrs. Carson, Mrs. Watts and Aimee. These three ladies speak about a young girl who seems to have some sort of disability or as mentioned in the story was “feebleminded”, this young girl goes by name of Lily Daw. I assume that Lily has a disability not only because the three ladies are trying to send her to this mental institute for the “feebleminded” but because the author portrays Lily’s character with a very special tone of voice and her character is also not able to make-out correct full sentences like the rest of the characters in the story.

She cannot constrain herself to the artificial behavior of those part of it. After being disgraced from the social circle, Lily could’ve easily used the letters to expose Bertha and reclaim her name. However, even though Bertha has antagonizes her throughout the novel, she cannot compel herself to do such a thing and burns the letters in Seldon’s fireplace. Lily’s righteousness also prevents her from finding a suitable husband-- the only way in which she can rise to the upper class. She refuses to participate in a loveless marriage that only acts as a business relation.