Maternal actions from mothers and motherly figures should convey love that is nurturing, comforting, and enlightening. When people do not receive these maternal actions their lives’ typically change negatively. In the book, “The Secret Life of Bees”, the protagonist, Lily Owens, a fourteen-year-old girl, is presently going through such a change. Throughout the story, Lily feels neglected and downhearted because she has no mother to be there with her; Lily was four years old when her mother, Deborah, suddenly passed away and was stolen from Lily’s life. However, Lily meets new people along her life’s journey who nurture and love her. Not until the end of the book does she realize these maternal figures and their love for her. One of these figures …show more content…
Lily experiences comfort from August when Lily tells her how she ended up in Tiburon, South Carolina. She begins to share with August her story and states that she ran away because T. Ray told her that Deborah abandoned both of them when she was little (238). Lily starts to remember the feeling of abandonment, caused by Deborah’s absence, when telling the story. The next thing Lily notices is that her eyes fill up and tears stream down her cheeks. August sees and takes Lily into her open arms (238). Lily recognizes that August wants to comfort and love her in a motherly way. A thought emerges in Lily’s mind about August’s maternal love of comfort, stating, “She didn’t say, Come on now, stop your crying, everything’s going to be okay, which is the automatic thing people say when they want you to shut up. She said, “It hurts, I know it does. Let it out. Just let it out” (238). Due to the comfort and words of love from August, Lily forgets her feelings about her mother’s absence and instead encounters another expression of August’s maternal …show more content…
Lily tells August about the criminal-like actions she took to get to Tiburon and her anger with Deborah abandoning her. August responds by telling Lily about her mother’s life story, after all, August worked as Deborah’s housekeeper in those formative years. Near the end of this deep conversation, August tells Lily an important life lesson, stating, “Every person on the face of the earth makes mistakes… There is nothing perfect. There is only life” (256). August reminds Lily that soon after her mother left her, she realized she made a mistake leaving Lily behind and tried to correct it by going back to Sylvan, South Carolina to recover Lily. However, Lily ends up accidentally shooting Deborah and she passes away. Although Lily feels hatred toward her mother for abandoning her, she also feels crushed about her mother’s absence because Deborah’s death is her fault. A quality of a good mother/motherly figure is giving truthful and useful insight to their child. August’s advice explains that even though things happen in life, people must be willing to notice and fix mistakes and forgive others’ mistakes. Lily continues to see more of August’s maternal love through the enlightenment she
...heir parents resulted in damaged relationships and escapes into the unknown. Chris was intelligent and well rounded, but he had several flaws, specifically his inability to make peace with his parents. He could not dismiss the mistakes his parents had made and hurt not only himself but also his entire family in the process. Lily was young, but mature beyond her age. She made impulsive decisions, such as running away with her nanny, but it did not ruin the flawed relationship with her father. Instead, it led to the truth she so desperately needed and a better relationship with her father. Lily’s leaving was the best thing she could have done for herself. Both Chris and Lily left with similar intentions but saw different results. Chris reached the realization that isolationism is not the best policy, and Lily was brought into a world filled with love and truth.
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.
For example, T. Ray punishes Lily by making her kneel on grits and verbally abuses her. Lily resents T. Ray for his brutality and gains the desire to flee her birth home. This shows that Lily desires more than just a physical house to live in, but also loving parental figures who can help guide her in life and show her love. This quest for acceptance led her to meet the Calendar Sisters.
I really was impacted by T. Ray’s quote during the height of the tension about Lily’s past mistakes, “ ‘It was you who did it, Lily. You didn’t mean it, but it was you’ ” (Kidd 299). This moment was one of my favorites because it showed the growth the lead character had made toward not only forgiving her mother, but forgiving herself. When Lily chases after her father to finally get the raw truth about the fateful day her mom died, it reveals that she is finally ready to come to terms with her past, no matter what really happened. At the beginning of the book, she can’t accept her mother’s death, her disappearance, and her lack of love from her parents. Coincidentally, she grasps at any excuse to punish herself because she is unsure of who she is.
Heart break, joy, love, happiness, The Book The Secret Life of Bees has it all! The book is about a young girls that accidentally shot her mother. After spending nine years with her abusive, and emotionally absent father, she decides to run away. So, she breaks her beloved nanny out of prison, and Lily escapes to Tiburon South Carolina, a town she links to her mother through the writing on one of her old possessions. While in Tiburon, Lily finds the calendar sisters three very different, very helpful sisters. The family agrees to take Lilly in, despite the fact that almost every white person in town frowns upon the very idea of this white girl staying in an African American household. While staying with the sisters, August, May, and June, Lily learns lots of things, ranging from bee keeping, to why and how her mother first left her. She falls in love, explores her past, and finds it within herself to forgive her mother for leaving her, and herself, for shooting her mom. This book is rich in both emotion, and culture.
“Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn't know a thing about life,” says Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees. This quote reveals that Lily, the main character in this novel, gains real wisdom. Later, Lily also gains a clear vision about the most important entities in life. Lily, with her new found wisdom, is ready to experience the real world, flaws and all. She does not only limit herself to anything- but also, she is ready for life’s dangers, endeavors, and in general, anything life throws at her. As she grows as an individual, her strength increases tremendously. This novel is narrated by fourteen year
With an increase in familiarity, as she progresses her outlook on life changes with her. By the closure of The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens experiences passion, rage, joy, and sorrow in larger quantities than most teens her age. Amidst every trial transpires an improved
Martin Luther King once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees fully embodies his idea of equality, by introducing the story of a fourteen-year-old white girl named Lily Owens, who lives during the time of the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina. Lily’s mother was killed in an accident when Lily was a little girl. Ever since, she lives with her father T-Ray, and her black surrogate mother, Rosaleen, in Sylvan, South Carolina.
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
August was correct when she said that Lily must be her own mother. Lily will not always have someone to care for her. If this happens she must learn to care for herself. Lily was also relying too much on the statue of Mary. When the statue of Mary was chained up Lily could not go to her for help.
It is with these actions that Snow Flower presents her inevitable ability of not following given instructions. Furthermore, from being free of others ruling, Snow Flower is able to keep a level head of the emotions, which dictate her character. These emotions include “trust” and “love”, and, they help her stay “persevering, straightforward [and] outward-looking” (4, 5). The exertion of her traits, are best in the viewing of how she deals with Lily. When Lily questions her of lying throughout their companionship, Snow Flower responds by saying that ‘[she tells her] the truth” (230). Snow Flower manages to show her preserving nature of hoping everything will get better. Although, this is not the case, when Lily humiliates her. Enacting a response to her claim, Snow Flower states that “[she cannot] just [wait for Lily’s choosing of comfort]” and that “[she feels] like a bird flying alone [who cannot find it’s] mate” (231). Thus, destroying the friendship officially, in both of their minds. Adding to this heavy hearted loss of companionship, Snow Flower dies at the end of the novel. In her last days of living, she tells Lily that “[she is] sorry for everything [and hopes that she understands that she still loves her]” (236). Her apology, incases her emotions once again, and, her personality of preserving, even in the face of death. Also in her last moments of life, Snow Flower asks Lily to be “[the] aunt to [her] children” (240) . Praying, that Lily will be able to watch over them, so, they do not ruin any of their relationships like they did. In other words, Snow Flower also exhibits her personality of outward-looking= moving towards the correct direction of life. Even if it takes a new generation to accomplish
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.
August Boatwright’s relationship with Lily shows her caring personality. August takes Lily in and becomes like a mother to her. Their relationship is significant to the rest of the novel because they make everyone else see that skin color does not matter.
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.