Morality can be separated into many entities, one of which being one’s willingness to personally sacrifice for someone else. One’s own mind may factor into one’s decision when put in a difficult situation, a situation as extreme as putting your own well-being on the line for someone else’s. Many people, when asked if they would help others at nearly any cost, would automatically answer yes; however, when faced with this type of hardship, one, more often than not, does what is in their self-interest. That, however, does not define whether one should help others or not. One is morally obligated to sacrifice their well-being for the benefit of another’s.
Struggle is not always selfmade. In Chris Cleave’s Little Bee (The Other Hand), Little Bee’s
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During her time at the immigration detention center, she come to find the sense of her own morality. She witnessed her own family being murdered and raped, thus causing her to say, “for six months of the detention center, I screamed every night and in the day I imagined a thousand ways to kill myself,” (Cleave 10). Little Bee’s thoughts are not caused because of her own actions. Due to her past experiences, she is forced to be put in this state of mind. One cannot deny someone’s personal dignity when confronting the basic need of giving and/or offering help. Sarah, during this time, is going through emotional struggle herself – dealing with the death of her husband, his suicide. Sarah’s struggle, in itself, is as well not self made, for she could do nothing to stop it. During this time, she still finds a way to help the well being of Little Bee. Mike LaBossiere’s …show more content…
Due to Little Bee watching the entirety of her family disappear, she was put into a state of lethargy – she was in need of someone to save her from her own mind. The entirety of her life was like a story, as she puts it, “I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us, ” (Cleave 131). This correlates to the previous quote from Little Bee, where she was considering committing suicide, and in a way, completing the circle she made by somewhat playing a role in Sarah’s husband, Andrew’s, suicide. Sarah, as a English magazine editor, most likely could not fathom the position she would be put in shortly after she met Little Bee, the position of helping Little Bee in risk of her own self wellness. Moreover, because Little Bee’s struggle was not self made, and it put her into the situation she is in now, one would be prone to making the sacrifice. When looking at all the inputs, one’s decision of helping someone else can be determined by the past situations that the one in need has went
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.
The themes of hatred and judgment are shown all throughout Little Bee. Whether it’s Lawrence’s threats, the carelessness of the detention officers, or the sideways glances from the relatives at Andrew’s funeral, Little Bee is always in the middle of some kind of judgment. However, there is one character that shows pure love and understanding for Little Bee, no matter her exterior or culture. Charlie O’Rourke may be considered naïve, but it’s his naivety that allows him to see past the discrimination Little Bee receives. He is the prime example of how children are often blind to this type of abhorrence. Charlie gives the readers insight into this phenomenon by allowing Little Bee to comfort him and by finally removing his Batman costume.
The call of conscience is continuous and it “summons” people to the challenge of assuming the ethical responsibility of affirming their freedom through resolute choice. For instance, people can structure and live their existence in a meaningful and moral way (Hyde, 2006, p. 39). Call of conscience is a driving force that pushes people to do what is morally right not only for them, but for others as well. Furthermore, call of conscience is a call of Being, “the call of Being demands courage from those who remain open to it and, in doing so, stand ready to acknowledge how their ways of thinking and acting may not be as authentic and respectful as they could possibly be” (Hyde, 2006, p. 51). A call of conscience persuades someone to do the right thing no matter what, even if a person helping someone else has the potential of having negative percussions for doing
“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
The objection says that Singer’s analyses of moral duty conflicts with society’s current outlook on charity, which views it as not an obligation but a personal choice, where those who choose to give are praised for their philanthropy but those who choose not to give are not condemned (236). Singer retorts this objection by saying that we as a society need to essentially change our perspective of charity (236). What Singer means by this is that we need to drastically revise our ideas of what a moral duty is because, in agreement with Singer’s premise that we are morally obligated to help those who are suffering if it is within our power to do so without causing something equally as bad as the suffering to happen (231), charity should be considered as our moral responsibility and a mandatory duty for society
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
In life, situations arrive that force us to make tough choices. Sometimes those choices are not what we feel are compassionate or morally right. We make these decisions to save ourselves. These are decisions of self-preservation, and they override compassion. Tadeusz Borowski depicts these choices in his book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. He shows that when people are put in the choice of doing what’s right or preserving their life, one is preferred over the other. Would they rather save their selves or just watch others be sent to their death. In the novel, the narrator wrestles with his decisions and like Borowski suffers from them.
Singer’s argument and viewpoint in the Ethics of Assistance proposes the argument of moral obligation in which he states that, “Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical attention are very bad things, and if we can prevent very bad things from happening, without sacrificing something of comparable moral value, then we are morally required to do it”. He claims that the concept of moral obligation should be revised and that we are obligated to help others in need, sacrificing something with any moral value. Although there are a few objections and exceptions to his argument, Peter Singer’s viewpoint on moral obligation is sensible, which everyone is obligated to prevent bad things from happening even though sacrifices of equivalent or in more value are in expense.
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
Richard Miller finds Singer’s conclusion unrealistically demanding. He approaches the problem differently and claims that we should instead accept the Principle of Sympathy. According to Miller’s Principle, what morality directly demands is a sufficiently strong concern towards neediness. One’s disposition to help the needy is “sufficiently strong” if expressing greater concern would “impose a significant risk of worsening one’s life” . The Principle of Sympathy differs from Singer’s Principle of Sacrifice mainly in two ways. First, the Principle of Sympathy is a moral code that concerns more with an agent’s disposition to give rather than the amount of money he end...
Following the traumatic experience in the detention center, Little Bee is taken in by Sarah and her son Charlie. They provide her with a home and the sense of having a family that she can trust and communicate her troubles with. This is a crucial position for Little Bee to be in because she has been experiencing situations that made her lose her sense of hope and belief that her conditions might improve. She tries to find ways commit suicide wherever she goes just in case matters get worse, that way she could relieve herself from all the pressure: “whenever I go into a new place, I work out how I would kill myself there” (Cleave 47) .So by having someone to communicate with and trust, it sparks the sense of hope and rebuilds her confidence. Moreover, Sarah and Charlie play a major role in Little Bee’s development.
Little Bee, by Chris Cleve, is a novel that explores unthinkable evil, but simultaneously celebrates its characters in their ability to transcend all that weighs them down, including their pasts, their secrets, and their flaws. For the character of Little Bee, identity is inescapably tied to ethnicity, nationality, gender, race, and class. A representative passage of the book that explores Little Bee’s point of view (both its unceasing optimism and stark realism) occurs in the final chapter: Little Bee is awoken from a good dream, and then comes the ominous first sentence, “There is a moment when you wake up from dreaming in the hot sun, a moment outside time when you do not know what you are” (Cleave 258). Little Bee is questioning her identity at just the moment when she should be most sure of it. Because Little Bee has been seeking a home, a family, and belonging, and has seemingly found it, the reader realizes that it is still uncertain. Still there is hope: Little Bee is hampered by the weight of her past; yet she is a character that has proven she can overcome the boundaries of her identity and change her station in life.
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.