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“The Secret Life of Bees” Movie Review “The Secret Life of Bees” is a movie that takes us through the incredible journey of a young girl named Lily Owens. She grows up with the horrible memory of the day she accidentally killed her mother. She and the family maid who has tried to fill the empty void as her mother, Rosaleen, escape the mistreatment that Lily receives from her father, T-Ray. After Rosaleen heard the news on T.V. about the Civil Rights Act being passed, she decided to take the opportunity and register to vote. As they got to town to register Rosaleen, she dumped the juice from her chew container onto men who made fun of her. She was arrested, and that is when they escaped. When Lily asks her father for more information about her mother, he told her that the day she died she was coming back to get her belongings. He tells Lily that her mother didn’t want to take her when she left. This upset Lily because she believed that a child couldn’t have two parents that didn’t love her. Lily has very little of her mother’s possessions, but the few items does have include her mother’s gloves, picture, and a wooden picture of a black Mary. On the back of the wooden picture, Tiburon, SC was inscribed. This became their point of destination as they left Lily’s hometown. As they reach Tiburon, they stop at a convenient store and Lily notices that the same picture that is on her wooden picture is also on the honey jars. They investigate and are led to a house where the “Calendar sisters” live. These three incredible women help Rosaleen and Lily out by letting them stay with them at their bright pink house. It is here that the two learn about bees and how they function as a society ... ... middle of paper ... .... Lily gets to stay in a home that makes her feel loved. She writes down her story, including her thoughts and emotions, into a book that was given to her by Zach. This movie takes place in South Carolina in 1964. This was the peak of racism in the South. ("Do Something.org") Many African Americans found support in a nonviolent African American Activist named Martin Luther King Jr. The result of all movements towards civil rights resulted in passing the Civil Rights Act in 1964. It was not uncommon to see a colored maid or cook in a white persons home. Works Cited Prince-Bythewood, Gina, dir. The Secret Life of Bees. Fox Starlight Pictures, 2008. DVD. "Racism Against African Americans." . N.p., Online Posting to Do Something.org. Web. 18 Dec. 2013. .
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.
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
Zach wants to be a lawyer and tells Lily that it is hard to become one because he is African American. Lily’s feelings for Zach introduce a new conflict in the story. She finds herself thinking of him often. She tries to convince herself that she should get over him by thinking, “That’s what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the world is a great big log thrown on the fires of love” (133). The point of love confuses her because she feels as if she has not experienced any love except from Rosaleen. She starts having a negative outlook on love and how it destroys the world. In the end, she comes to realize that she has many people that love
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
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.
Para 2: First of all, Bees and beehives is a significant motif in the novel by Kidd because it represented the community of women. The Boatwright sisters, along with Our Daughters of Mary, stood up for Lily when T. Ray came to take her home. Quoted from page 721, “The four of them lined up beside us, clutching their pocketbooks up against their bodies like they might have to beat the living heck out of somebody.” The Daughters of Mary all stood in the parlor of the Boatwright house, ready to take on whatever came their way. The community of women in this novel stuck together
In the story The Secret Life of Bees, a South Carolinian teenager by the name of Lily Owens experiences more dejection and merriment than most. Bereft and abused, Lily ventures out of her home town accompanied by her more-than-just-a-servant mother figure as her curiosity about her long-lived mother and demand for love grows. I will be evaluating the relationship between Lily and her father, T-Ray, connecting to the miracles that lead Lily to the three ladies, and questioning the relationship between Lily and her mither.
Honey: When Lily and Rosaleen arrive in Tiburon, they have a picture of a Black Madonna and they see the same exact picture on a honey jar in a downtown store. This is how they find out that the Boatwright sisters are beekeepers. After arriving at the farmhouse, they help the sisters take care of the bees and fill jars with honey.
“‘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.
The Quest Pattern theory states that during adolescence a youth is looking for their identity. This individual will look for a place where they are accepted. The quest fits a loose pattern; the first step is determined by fate, destiney provides a troubling situation before the individual can embark on their journey. Then the initial change happens, or the event that sets the quest in motion. Next is the unchartered territory, in this stage the real adventure happens; a person can geographically venture into new territory, or an experience an emotional journey somewhere outside of their comfort zone. Next, is the required learned knowledge; this is the information that the individual learns about his or her self in order to reach self-acceptance. There is the journey home, which is a quest within itself, but also a stage where more knowledge is gained. Lastly the reward, it is the happiness that occurs from the knowledge that the individual has gained; this stage is also known as finding the meaning of life. The Quest Pattern is a journey of personal evolution that every antagonist can relate to.
Growing up is hard and full of tests and changes. As bildungsroman novels, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green address and center on these issues. Lily, the main character in secret life of bees, is a teenager dealing with a hard past that is affecting her present and future. The fault in our stars protagonist, Hazel also faces struggles living an abnormal life battling cancer. Lily and Hazel both have comparable coming-of-age experiences in their epiphanies that change their thinking, the challenges of young love, and maturation from their journeys.
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.
Over the course of several months, August guides, teaches, and helps Lily to accept and forgive herself. August once knew Deborah, and she knows that Lily is her daughter, but she does not confront Lily about the issue. Instead, she waits until Lily puts the puzzle pieces together and discovers for herself the relationship between her mother and August. August knows she is not ready to learn the truth about her mother when she and Lily first meet, so she waits for Lily to come to her. When Lily finally realizes the truth, she comes to August and they have a long discussion about Deborah. During this discussion, Lily learns the truth about her mother; that her mother only married T. Ray because she was pregnant with Lily, then after several years she had enough of living and dealing with T. Ray, so she left. Lily is disgusted by the fact that her mother would've done something like this, she did not want to let go of the romantic image of her mother she had painted in her mind (“‘The Secret Life of Bees’ Themes and Symbols of The Secret Life of Bees). Lily struggles to stomach the fact the her mother truly did leave her and she spends some time feeling hurt and angry, but one day, August shows her a picture of Lily and her mother. As Lily looks at the picture she is comforted and thinks, “May must’ve made it to heaven and explained to my mother about the sign I wanted. The one that would let me know I was loved” (Kidd 276). Seeing
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.
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.