What Is Lily Relationship In The Secret Life Of Bees

During the novel The Secret Life of Bees, Lily’s perspective on her parents continuously changes as she learns many more things about them from August. In the beginning of the story Lily sees T.Ray as a horrible father. He doesn’t care for her very much and is strict to a certain point. In a way Lily hates her father who is abusive, pays hardly any attention to her and stops her from doing things she loves like reading for example. The relationship between T.Ray and Lily is not very strong as she looks to Rosaleen as more of a parent than she does with him. Lily, unlike she does with her father loves her mother very much despite the fact she is no longer physically with her. Lily continues to look up to her and likes to think that she is looking over her like a guardian

She uses this as a way of proving to herself that she was wrong and her seemingly heartless father does actually care and love her. By bringing all of these moments together it’s easy to see that at some points the way Lily feels about her parents is pretty complicated, and there’s many different way to look at the relationship between Lily and her parents. With her father she starts out by having more negative emotions and having a better understanding of why he is the way he is. Terrence became an angry person as soon as things began to change, once all these things like his wife leaving and then passing happened he grew into the negative person Lily now knows as her father. Deborah on the other hand was a more positive person, always sending August letters and talking to her on the phone. She was said to be very joyful until she became depressed. Once she became depressed things began to change, she left both T.Ray and Lily hoping to be happy again as she went the the home of the Boatwrights. All these events lead up to the way the Owens interact with each other and other characters throughout the