The Troubled Consciousness of Sylvia Plath as seen in “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
In the poem, “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” Sylvia Plath uses a metaphor to
represent the darker aspects of the subconscious that are leaking into her conscious mind:
The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can’t keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.
It is inevitable that Plath will need to face the bees that lie in the box. She is “appalled”
at the thought of letting them out. She says “I am no source of honey/So why should they
turn on me,” but she is still clearly convinced that they pose a threat. She suggests that
the bees taken separately would not be too difficult to handle, but that now they are like a
“Roman mob” and could kill her. Plath emphasizes the fact that she has “ordered” this
box in the first and fifth stanzas. This suggests that she knew she would have to deal with
what the bee box represents.
The bees that are locked up in the box symbolize the swarming and potentially
destructive chaos that Plath can feel within herself. The bees have the ability to inflict
pain on her and sting her. She longs to take control over the bees to save herself from any
more pain. In the fifth stanza Plath does assert dominance over the bees in the box:
“They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.” She is trying to convince
herself of her own strength by placing herself in a position of power.
There is a correlation between the bees and her father. Her father Otto Plath was
an expert on insects--especially bees. The whole series of bee poems relates to her father
(like “The Bee Keeper’s Daughter”). If the bees are locked in the box, then much of what
she is feeling is connected to her father. Perhaps she is trying to place herself in control
of the troubling memory of her father. Plath needs to confront her feelings of
abandonment and despondency. The description of the box as “dark” in the third stanza
further implies that part of what she must deal with inside of the box is related to him. In
“Daddy” Bishop refers to her father’s “fat black heart.” She also refers to him as the
“man in black” or the “black man” in other poems.
In The Secret Life of Bees, written by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily lacks a mother figure in her life, which leads her on a compelling journey as she desperately searches for answers about her true mother. Her abusive father, T. Ray, causes Lily to run away along with Rosaleen, the housekeeper. They are led to the Boatwright household by one of the few things Lily still possesses from her mother, a Black Madonna Honey label. Lily is given the opportunity to create a mother-daughter type bond between her and the Boatwright sisters. August, one of the sisters, acts as the “queen bee” throughout the story. August teaches Lily that a mother does not have to be someone who you share blood with, but rather, a mother is
The meaning behind Sonsyrea Tate’s statement can be found deeply rooted within Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees. The desire for “home,” or identity, within Lily is the driving force that leads her to find the pink house and the Calendar Sisters. This new physical and spiritual “home” that Lily finds illuminates the larger meaning of the novel, which is acceptance and identity, and displays where she truly
Another theme present in the film is the importance of female community. Throughout the movie, the audience continually sees women together—for healing, for strength, and to learn to forgive and love. Each of the women is fierce and strong in their own way. Despite the fact that May Boatwright committed suicide, we still saw courageousness within her. Community is essential to women; it allows us the freedom to be who we truly are and to feel loved and protected. It should also be noted that beehives cared for by August, Lily, and Zach serve as a parallel to the community established by August. Beehives are female-dominated structures in which a queen bee is mother t...
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
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
Finally, the novel The Secret life of Bees demonstrates the emotional maturity, and growth of the both Lily and Zach, during times of systematic racism. The novel authentically represents Civil Rights Movement’s time, and makes us realize how spiritually sad and dangerous these times were.
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
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath: 1950-1962. 430 Ed. Karen V. Kukil. Transcribed from the original manuscripts at Smith College. New York: Anchor, 2000.
...he language of war. One of her last poems shows how this vision both restricted and unconstrained her expression (Magill 2225). Some of Plath’s poems, though the personal voice may be dying out, are still very personal (Magill 2226). Plath’s symbolism comes from an arrangement of misfortune. The purpose of Plath’s poems is to show a deeper pattern (Hughes 5). Plath’s narrative, The Bell Jar, remained important to most readers (“The Importance…” 2). Plath believes relationships are necessary, but destructive (Smith 6).
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
Miline, Ira Mark. Ed. "The Secret Life of Bees." Novels for Students. Vol. 27. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Print.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Print.
When Sylvia Plath was told her father died at the tender age of nine, she bitterly said, “I’ll never speak to God again.” In her brief but indispensable writing career, Plath distinguished herself in the poetical realm with her body of work that includes but is not limited to poems, short stories, and one semi-autobiographical novel. Her legacy lives on through her dark themes laden with powerful images such as the moon and skulls, while a father-type figure acts as a significant force either as a central antagonistic power or an influential shadow looming in the background. Brooding thoughts and despondent emotion overcome the reader when faced with one of Plath’s numerous works such as “Daddy,” “The Colossus,” and “Lady Lazarus.” Sometimes straightforward in understanding, Plath’s works contain intermittently placed, unique choices in diction like “mule bray, pig-grunt” throughout her works. On February 11, 1963, Plath was found with her head placed in her kitchen oven (death by carbon monoxide), yet she continues to resonate with people to this day; is it because we are able to relate to her melancholy and heartache? Or because of our sickening-interest in her suicide and the events that led to it? Maybe it is both. Because of her father’s death at a young age, Sylvia Plath’s poems underlies a theme regarding her suicidal demise and victimization at the hands of a patriarchal society, particularly from her husband, Ted Hughes, and late father, Otto Plath.
the boy’s enjoyment and they were able to kill them successfully because the bees were smaller
Comparatively, in the sixth stanza, Path, refers to death as “the grave cave” and “how soon the flesh will be at home on her”, this fragment can be the representation of how calm she feels with killing herself and the connection she feels with doing it on her own house. Plath considers death as a satisfactory, comfortable act; and it’s here where her masochistic self surfaces, it provides an insight on how well at ease she feels with death. She also uses her death as a show. She does this by changing the language to that of a