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Effects of violence on teens
The secret life of bees movie essay
The secret life of bees movie essay
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Recommended: Effects of violence on teens
Case study of the Secret Life of Bees
The Secret Life of Bees is a fictional novel by Sue Monk Kidd that is set in 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act, in Sylvan, South Carolina. The book focuses on the fourteen-year-old Lilly who runs away from her abusive father, with her servant Rosaleen to Tiburon, S.C. In Tiburon, Lilly uses one of her deceased mother’s treasured possessions, a black Virgin Mary, to lead her and Rosaleen to Black Madonna Honey produced by the Boatwrights sisters May, June, and August. These three sisters take in both Lilly and Rosaleen; putting Lily to work in the honey house where she is finally happy for the first time since her mother was killed. Lily is running not just from her abusive father but from the memories she has from when she was four-years-old, specifically the time when she accidentally killed her mother. This book gives a poignant analysis of this fourteen-year-old girl as she demonstrates the concepts of attachment styles, dating, parenting style, self-esteem, and the cohort effects of the generation she lived in.
Throughout the book and the movie there are signs of the effects of Lily’s attachment style. One such instance is when she is telling August Boatwright how her mother died; Lily cries and tells August that she is unlovable and that she wrecks everything, this is a sign of an insecure/disorganized attachment style. An insecure/disorganized attachment style is usually characterized by the adolescent having an unusually high amount of fear as well as finding themselves believing they are unworthy of affection. Typically this attachment style is caused by a parent’s death or abuse by the parent, Lily is abused by her father and caused her mother’s death as well as witn...
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...lls and can show them a better way to go about it.
Each of these concepts is important to how well I do my job and whether or not I can accomplish what I set out to do. It is not impossible to influence a family or an adolescent for the better, as the movie shows, but it means that I have to actually know what I’m doing and know the signs of the concepts I’m looking for in the adolescent. I cannot just guess and blunder my way through, not if I truly care about the adolescent or child I’m trying to aid. The movie is a wonderful look at a young, immature girl growing up into a loving and loved young woman who lived through awful trials and benefited from the good people around her. I may only be in the lives of the adolescents I help for a short period of time, but I want them to remember me as their August Boatwright who loved and believed in all they could do.
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.
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters in the end.” -Ernest Hemingway. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a coming-of-age novel written in the form of first person, using the internal monologue of a tween girl named Lily who lives in the very hostile, racist environment of South Carolina in the 1960’s. Lily lives in a household with her African American maid and only friend, Rosaleen, and her abusive father, T. Ray, who informs Lily that she was the one who killed her deceased mother as a child. In a search to find clues that deny this claim, Lily and Rosaleen set out to Tiburon, SC, a place her mother has indicated on the back of an unusual picture of a Black Madonna. The basis of the novel
When someone hears the word quest, their mind automatically goes to a mythical land of dragons and knights in shining armor. However, Thomas Foster’s book How to Read Literature Like a Professor states that this shouldn’t always be the case. In Chapter One: Every Trip Is a Quest, Foster claims that a quest in literature can take place in any time period and can be as mundane as grocery shopping. In order to classify an event as quest, it needs to follow certain criteria. There needs to be “a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a real reason to go there” (Foster, 3). Furthermore, considering the definition of a quest by Thomas Foster, it is clear that the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, fits
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.
Within this world, people become self-governed after going through difficult times. In this novel, a fourteen-year-old white girl, Lily Owen’s, determination leads her to find contentment and another self-ruled woman, August Boatwright. After running away from home, Lily meets August and her two black sisters who maintain a large apiary to produce honey. Although some people work efficiently together, independent persons seek true happiness with their experiences as shown in the novel, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Throughout the novel, Lily and August prove the importance of independence by managing their lives and taking care of their loved ones.
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.
“‘I’m staying here,’ I said. ‘I’m not leaving.’ The words hung there, hard and gleaming. Like pearls I’d been fashioning down inside my belly for weeks” (Kidd 296). This is one of the examples in Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, the Secret Life of Bees, where Lily has finally transitioned into adulthood. The author communicates the message that throughout the novel Lily endures an emotional struggle that helps build her into the woman she is at the end of the novel with indirect characterization, allusions, and symbolism. These literary devices display the characters’ emotions and feelings throughout the book. In doing this, Kidd establishes the relationships between Lily and the people around her as ones that giver her a hard time, but teach her to be more strong. Therefore, the author included literary devices as a method of emphasizing the maturing of Lily through hardships that she eventually resolves.
A poignant and touching classic, The Secret Life of Bees details the coming of age stories of a young girl named Lily. Her life up until the start of the novel was hard, she was friendless with an abusive father and a heavy conscience, as she believes that she is responsible for her mother’s death. Lily’s only solace is her stand-in-mother, a black woman named Rosaleen, so when Rosaleen is hauled to jail for standing up for herself, Lily decided to run away to a mysterious town that has some linkage to her mother. Her escapades lead her to three, wonderful, eclectic, devout followers of Mary, and to a new life. As the story unfolds, an elaborate symbol lies hidden just beneath the surface, one that seems so obvious, but only lies as a hidden
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
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.
The Secret Life of Bees delineates an inspirational story in which the community, friendship and faith guide the human spirit to overcome anything. The story follows Lily Owens, a 14 year old girl who desperately wants to discover the cause of her mothers death. Her father T. Ray gives her no answers, which leads their maid, Rosaleen, to act as her guardian. Together, Lily and Rosaleen run away to Tiburon, South Carolina and find a welcoming community. It is in Tiburon that Lily learns many life lessons, including many about herself. In her novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd explores a theme of spiritual growth through Lily's search for home as well as a maternal figure.