A beehive without a queen is a community headed for extinction. Bees cannot function without a queen. They become disoriented and depressed, and they stop making honey. This can lead to the destruction of the hive and death of the bees unless a new queen is brought in to guide them. Then, the bees will cooperate and once again be a prosperous community. Lily Melissa Owens, the protagonist of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, faces a similar predicament. While she does not live in a physical hive, the world acts as a hive. She must learn to work with its inhabitants, sharing a common direction, in order to reach her full potential. The motif of the beehive is symbolic of how crucial it is to be a part of a community in order to achieve …show more content…
When the book begins, Lily is depressed and guilt-ridden over the loss of her mother and her father T. Ray’s cold and abusive behavior. These are symptoms of queenlessness, a hive in chaos. “The queen...is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed...the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours...they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness” (Kidd 1). Without Deborah in the house, Lily and T. Ray suffered and the distance between them grew. Without a queen bee to give them a direction, they had no sense of community. Lily and T. Ray did not work together to prosper, and neither could function at their full …show more content…
When May dies, the personified bees rely on their religious and beekeeping connections to overcome their tough times. “August showed us how to drape a square over each box, securing it with a brick and making sure we left the bees’ entrance open” (Kidd 205). This ritual comes from a religious belief about bees having a connection with death; this is another form of guidance from the Black Mary. The grieving family turned to Mary after May’s death, and even Lily found herself in the room housing the statue more often than usual. The Black Mary is starting to become Lily’s guiding force; she even calls it “mother.” Lily asks for Mary’s help in order to be happy again. This help, of which the others are in need as well, allows the community to thrive, even with the loss of one member. Through rituals and prayers the Black Mary helps the Boatwrights and Lily overcome hard
People share their secret lives without even talking about them. It only takes a glance or feeling to see that others have faced similar situations and problems, some people even live parallel lives. Despite the fact that many people believe it impossible for a measly insect, like a bee, to know the pain hardships a human faces, Sue Monk Kidd proves them wrong with her book The Secret Life of Bees. In her novel she derives many of her characters from the types of bees that exist in a hive. Lily and Zach have characteristic that are akin to that of field bees, August has that nurturing personality of a nurse bee, and the Lady of Chains is revered by her subjects just like a Queen bee is by her hive. Nowadays, no one ever faces a problem that someone, or something, has already faced. No one really has a secret life all to themselves.
As strong, independent, self-driven individuals, it is not surprising that Chris McCandless and Lily Owens constantly clashed with their parents. In Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild, Chris was a twenty-four-year-old man that decided to escape the materialistic world of his time for a life based on the simplistic beauty of nature. He graduated at the top of his class at Emory University and grew up in affluent Annandale, Virginia, during the early 1980’s. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily was a fourteen-year-old girl who grew up in the 1960’s, a time when racial equality was a struggle. She had an intense desire to learn about her deceased mother. Her nanny, Rosaleen, with whom she grew very close over the years, raised Lily with little help from her abusive father. When her father failed to help Rosaleen after three white men hospitalized her, Lily was hysterical. Later, Lily decided to break Rosaleen out of the hospital and leave town for good. While there are differences between Chris McCandless and Lily Owens, they share striking similarities. Chris McCandless’ and Lily Owens’s inconsistencies of forgiveness with their parents resulted in damaged relationships and an escape into the unknown.
Most runaway youth are homeless because of neglect, abuse and violence, not because of choice. Lily Owens is the protagonist in the novel, Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, is no different. Lily is a fourteen year-old girl still grieving over her mother's death. T. Ray a man who has never been able to live up to the title of a father, due to years of abuse, has not made it any easier. Lily is a dynamic character who in the beginning is negative and unconfident. However, throughout the novel Lily starts to change into the forgiving person she is at the end.
In life, actions and events that occur can sometimes have a greater meaning than originally thought. This is especially apparent in The Secret Life Of Bees, as Sue Monk Kidd symbolically uses objects like bees, hives, honey, and other beekeeping means to present new ideas about gender roles and social/community structures. This is done in Lily’s training to become a beekeeper, through August explaining how the hive operates with a queen, and through the experience Lily endures when the bees congregate around her.
This “home” that she finds brightly displays the ideas of identity and feminine society. Though Lily could not find these attributes with T. Ray at the peach house, she eventually learns the truth behind her identity at the pink house, where she discovers the locus of identity that resides within herself and among the feminine community there. Just like in any coming-of-age story, Lily uncovers the true meaning of womanhood and her true self, allowing her to blossom among the feminine influence that surrounds her at the pink house. Lily finds acceptance among the Daughters of Mary, highlighting the larger meaning of acceptance and identity in the novel. The meaning behind Sonsyrea Tate’s statement can be found deeply rooted within Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees.
Lily’s biases in The Secret Life Of Bees have altered greatly; she now knows that people of color have the ability to fend for themselves, and that they can be strong and influential people. The most outstanding thing that has caused Lily’s biases to change is the Boatwright sisters. August Boatwright was the person that took Lily by surprise, Lily was raised with this false philosophy that because she was white, she was superior, more intelligent than African Americans. “At my school they made fun of colored people’s lips and noses. I myself laughed at these jokes, hoping to fit in.
In conclusion, although Lily did not fully accomplish her stated reason to go on a quest, she did learn a lot about herself and her worth. The novel, The Secret Life of Bees, met
Intro: Working around the hives; dedicated and faster with each movement. Honey drizzling in golden crevices; a family unit working together, buzzing in harmony. Bees and beehives is a significant motif in the novel Secret Life of Bees: By Sue Monk Kidd because it represents the community of women in the novel. It also represents Lily Owen’s longing and need for a mother figure in her life. And finally, it was significant because the bees lived a secret life, just as Lily and Rosaleen did in the novel.
Many individuals have a philosophy of life, but Lily Owen’s is unique. Throughout The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens establishes her philosophy of life. At the opening of the novel, she is a pure girl whose horrors become a reality the following day. Once she has the truth of her mother’s parting imprinted into her head, everything Lily favors correct is proven wrong. After fleeing the jailhouse alongside Rosaleen she endures a drastic transition in age.
Sue Monk Kidd’s book, The Secret Life of Bees has an epigraph in every chapter that parallels the events in the story. In Chapter 14 the epigraph says, “A queenless colony is a pitiful and melancholy community; there may be a mournful wail or lament from within. Without intervention, the colony will die. But introduce a new queen and the most extravagant change takes place. - The Queen Must Die; And Other Affairs of Bees and Men” ( Kidd 277 ). The epigraph in Chapter 14 is related to the chapter because it parallels Lily’s adventures and role in the story. The queenless colony the epigraph mentions is talking about the absence of Lily’s mother and how it affects the characters in the story. A mournful wail is a metaphor to the guilt she feels because she is responsible for her mother’s passing. Lily keeps these feelings of remorse and guilt kept inside for a majority of her childhood. Lily has been trying to find a new life, and she does this by becoming the new queen, finally having control of her life.
Throughout The Secret Life of Bees , there is no shortage of symbolism, coming directly from its namesake, bees. Each connection draws upon the deep and rich meaning behind this wonderful composed text. The bees, however, never are a scapegoat. Similar to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird character Atticus, they never allow for shortcuts or disillusion with reality. They force you to see the world as it is, and to accept it, and send love to it, for it is all you can, when you are as insignificant as a
The setting in the Secret life of bees helps set the overall structure of the book. As the setting changes, and certain events take place, so does the characters views on life. The most change seen is on Lily, the main character. Her values multiply and her perspective on cultural order shifts from one mind set to another. Although one part of the book’s setting limits the opportunities of the characters; the other part opens those and different opportunities. The setting in The Secret Life of Bees is vitally important because it impacts the main character and the people around her through events that transpire in the book.
Lily has a lot of mother figures in her life. In ?The Secret Life of Bees? two mother figures that she has are Rosaleen and August. A mother cares for her young and guides them trough life. She comforts and soothes them when they need it. Lily?s Mothers are Rosaleen and August. Both act as mothers for Lily in different ways.
Grief leaves an imprint on those who experience it. Some can survive its deep sorrow, others cannot. In The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, she explores the effect of grief on the main characters. The novel opens with fourteen-year-old Lily Owns struggling with the knowledge that her mother was dead because she, as an infant, picked up a loaded gun and accidentally shot her. She runs away from her abusive father in search for answers of who her mother was. Lily hitchhikes to Tiburon, South Carolina; the location written on the back of an image of the Black Madonna – one of the only belongings she has of her mother’s. There, she finds a pink house inhabited by the Boatwright sisters who are African American women making Black Madonna honey. The Boatwright sisters have had their share of grief with the death of two of their sisters and the racial intolerance they face despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Boatwright sisters and Lily Owens have different methods of coping with grief; internalizing, ignoring, and forgetting are some of the ways they cope, with varying degrees of success. They discover that they must live past their grief, or else it will tear them apart.
Ruth, Elizabeth. “The Secret Life of Bees Traces the Growth of Lily’s Social Consciousness.” Coming of Age in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2013. 63-65. Print. Social Issues in Literature. Rpt. of “Secret Life of Bees.” The Globe and Mail 2 Mar. 2002: n. pag.