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. Rosaleen is the disciplinary figure in Lily?s life. She is tough and sometimes mean but really she loves Lily. Lily knew that ?despite her sharp ways, her heart was more tender than a flower skin and she loved her beyond reason?. Rosaleen also shows her love for Lily when she avoids telling Lily that her mother left her. She knew this would break Lily?s heart. Another motherly figure in Lily?s life is August. She encourages Lily to open her heart and reveal the truth to them. August is very patient and would make a great mother. Even though she knew that Lily was lying to her, she gave Lily a chance to settle down. In doing this she was wise. If she had confronted Lily, Lily probably would have left the house. Unlike June even though Lily was white she still treated her regularly. August was more of a friend to Lily. They shared many interests. One of these interests was to mix cola with peanuts. Another interest that they shared was that they loved beekeeping. Rosaleen did not have as much in common as Lily did. She was more of a caretaker to Lily than a friend. When they lived with T. Ray she would cook dinner and dress Lily up. Even though Lily does not have much in common with her she still loves her. 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.
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 mother is someone that would risk a speeding ticket to get her child to a hospital. A mother is someone that cooks for her family delicious food. A mother is someone that loves her children, even when they disrespect her. A mother is someone who risks all she has for her children. A mother is a HERO! The qualities of a hero are being intelligent, caring, and courageous. Two heroes that display these aspects are Odysseus from the epic The Odyssey and a modern mother. Odysseus, a soldier and a leader, on his journey back from the war of Troy, let the Cyclopes eat his men. In contrast, a modern mom saves her children by rushing to the hospital to save them.
According to pages 31 and 32, Lily said, “I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam.” She was the bee, flying to feel the wind, but full of emptiness because she couldn’t find her flower; her mother. Since the age of 4, Lily grew up without a mother. After the bees came the summer of 1964, she thought, “Looking back on it now, I wanted to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed.”(32) The bees set the course of the novel, and finally, at the end of the novel, helped her find closure for her
In the book, The Secret Life of Bees, my impression of Lily changes throughout the book because as she is learning and finding new information about her family, more specifically her mom and her reactions to the information she receives. For the rest of the book, I believe Lily gave me 3 different impressions. The 3 are that she feels insecure about herself, lonely, and a bit self-centered but also can be forgiving and loving.Throughout the story, many impressions changes as the situation changes.
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.
May is one of the Boatwright sisters, that Lily and Rosaleen stay with in Tiburon. May becomes upset and sad very easily, so everyone has to watch what they say around her; often when she is sad she goes to her wailing wall and gets all her thoughts out by writing it down and sticking it in the wall. One night, after May learns of Zach’s arrest, she leaves the house and commits suicide by drowning herself
In the novel “The Secret Life of Bees”, which is surprisingly not an informative book talking about bees, the main character Lily Owens is set out to be the victim because of her parents. The novel first tells the reader that Lily accidently kills her mother when she was a toddler, and goes on to explaining how her father, whom she calls T-Ray, is an abusive man. He punishes Lily very often in many ways, like making her kneel in grits and speaking to her in an offensive manner. We later find out that Lily’s mother, Deborah, suffers from depression, partly because of the dominance coming from T-Ray, and learn the harsh truth of her leaving Lily. The author, Sue Monk Kidd, gives the vision of T-Ray being a bad father and Deborah being an ethical
In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, the recurring theme is love. Throughout the whole novel Lily is looking for a mother figure. When she ends up at the Boatwright house she begins to learn more things about her deceased mother, when she is telling August about her mother and her father, T. Ray, she states that she is unlovable. Later on in the book when T. Ray is driving away after deciding to leave Lily at the Boatwright house she turns towards August and the Daughters of Mary on the porch and says, “I remember the sight of them standing there waiting. All these women, all this love, waiting.” (299). During this Lily realizes that she, is in fact loveable and that so many people are there to act as a mother for
...gh daughter because of her wealth. Lily is aware that marrying for money and social staus will not bring her happiness, but chooses a socially uplisfting life instead of her own happiness. Later in the novel we find out that Gryce marries another woman . This shows the importance of money and social status, and also, how powerful the elite circle, that lily will do anything to be apart of, is. From the previous events, one can deduce that you can never rely on man to bring you to power. The New York circle is so exclusive and elite that you can never be sure of your position, you must constantly plan, plot, and climb your way to the top, and once there you must fight to keep your position. This is the life the Lily Bart wants to badly, in Old New York money, social status, and how other perieve you was the most important things to these woman.
A mother is like glue. She is the glue that holds the families together, because she provides love, care, and support to her family. It is the simple things a mother does that are important. Who used to hear you before you can talk? Who used to hold you before you could walk? And who wiped your tears when you cried? However, a mother could also be foolish and small-minded. In Pride And Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet is a great example of a foolish mother and how a mother could represent her daughters in foolish way.
First, Kidd highlights the power of strength through indirectly characterizing Lily as a courageous young woman to display the character’s growing maturity throughout the novel. Her courageousness is demonstrated after T Ray, Lily’s father, picks her up from jail. Upon arriving home, it is clear that Lily is displeased about how T Ray handled the situation. Vexed and irritated, she challenges him: “‘You don’t scare me,’ I repeated, louder this time. A brazen feeling had broken loose in me, a daring something that had been locked up in my chest’” (38). Even though Lily knows that disrespecting her father will mean terrible consequences, kneeling on Martha White grits, she proceeds
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
August Boatwright is queen bee, without a doubt she is a powerful lady who with grace raises her sisters, and easily takes in Lily and Rosaleen even when others had doubts and questions about bringing them into the hive that is her Caribbean Pink house. A queen bee cares for all; cares for thousands of daughters and sons. Lily didn’t chose to not have a mother and have her birth mom die when Lily was such a young age, however she survives with just T.Ray. T.Ray is her abusive father until Lily’s self esteem has vanished, and with that self esteem disappearing so did Lily with Rosaleen, to chase after her mother’s past to Tiburon. Lily did not need to chose to accept another motherly figure in her life, but she found August
At age four, Lily Owens accidentally kills her mother in an act to help her. As she was handing her mother a gun, her mother dropped it. The gun then backfired on her and kills Lily’s mom. Lily is clearly traumatized by this event. As soon as Lily enters the Boatwright home, she is overcome with motherly love. Raub writes, “Upon settling into her new life in Tiburon, Lily finds motherly love where she did not expect it” (Raub 1). Some love is received from Rosaleen and August and the rest from the Black Madonna. Lily is also well received by the black sisterhood. “Lily enters a loving, compassionate world of the feminine divine, a black sisterhood grounded in worship of the Black Madonna” (Hamilton and Jones 2). August, one of the Boatwright sisters, becomes a mother figure to Lily. August is not only a mother to her, but as well, her spiritual mentor in the book. The Boatwright sisters love her in different ways. August lets Lily to open up and cry to her like a mother would. The Black Madonna was a major idea and religious feature in The Secret Life of Bees. “The Black Madonna, a symbol of freedom and consolation, wraps her veil of protection over the oppressed African American women and the abused Lily in the pink house” (Hebb 2). Lily is raised a Baptist and has hardly ever heard of the Mother of God, who only appears at Christmas in the Protestant doctrine. By the end of the summer, she has experienced the truth about what
Who was I going to ask about that? And who but my mother could’ve understood the magnitude of driving me to junior cheerleader tryouts?”(13). Her father, T-Ray, never liked to talk about Lily’s mother, and didn’t even like to hear her name. T-Ray was also cruel to Lily, never showing her affection and neglecting her while also giving her harsh punishments. Once, while lying in bed, Lily “thought about dying and going to be with my mother in paradise”(3), where her mother would kiss her and forgive her. Later on, she is still faced with death. She learns that June, one of the Boatwright sisters plays cello for the recently departed and dying, and used to work at a mourgue. May’s twin, April, had killed herself when they were much younger, and later, so does May. Not only that, but Lily is also living in a world faced with prejudice and racism. Since The Secret Life of Bees takes place in the 1960s South, discrimination runs rampant. Lily sees it everywhere, from T-Ray’s prejudice, to how the law treats Rosaleen and Zach. When Rosaleen is arrested, it is because