The Art of Forgiveness 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 the beginning of the novel, as the reader is first introduced to Lily’s character, she comes across as an extremely negative young girl. While thinking about
Lily shows forgiveness and understanding towards her mother in the quote at the top of page 277, “a queenless colony is a pitiful and melancholy community; there may be a mournful wail or lament from within...Without intervention, the colony will die. But introduce a new queen and the most extravagant change takes place” (277). In the beginning of the novel, the queen bee represents Deborah, Lily’s mother. When she passes away Lily’s life spins out of control. However, forgiving not only her mom and dad, but herself has allowed a new queen to take order, August. When her father finds out where Lily’s been hiding all this time he goes to take her home, “I looked into his eyes. They were full of a strange fogginess. ‘Daddy,’ I said.” Lily has stated from the beginning that T. Ray has never earned the title of ‘Dad’; Lily calling him Daddy, is her way of forgiving her father for everything he put her through. Lily has been through more than most fourteen year-olds can imagine. Her learning to forgive her mother her father and herself has gotten her to finally open up, and make friends. She can finally stop living her life with regret of the past, and of her mother's death, and
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.
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.
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.
This “home” that she finds brightly displays the ideas of identity and feminine society. Though Lily could not find these attributes with T. Ray at the peach house, she eventually learns the truth behind her identity at the pink house, where she discovers the locus of identity that resides within herself and among the feminine community there. Just like in any coming-of-age story, Lily uncovers the true meaning of womanhood and her true self, allowing her to blossom among the feminine influence that surrounds her at the pink house. Lily finds acceptance among the Daughters of Mary, highlighting the larger meaning of acceptance and identity in the novel. The meaning behind Sonsyrea Tate’s statement can be found deeply rooted within Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees.
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.
Lily’s actions are completely driven by her desire to fit into the upper class part of society and her need to have money to successfully do this. The actions she partakes in to achieve these goals are sometimes harshly judged by other characters, but The House of Mirth seems to almost draw sympathy for Lily from the fact that she is stuck in this role she cannot remove herself from. Even through showing other life paths like Gerty Farish’s, Lily’s options for an independent life where she can live the way she desires are limited. What she was taught as a child, the choices she makes because of her childhood, how being poor is viewed by society, and the unjust view of Lily’s actions are what ultimately both destroys Lily and results in her being shown sympathy.
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.
Old Woman Magoun most likely feels responsible for Lily’s situation and her own daughter’s demise and has learned to fear men as a result of it. She fears the girl’s father because he represents the part of herself that she cannot control, Lily. She has no choice but to give up her granddaughter and she cannot bear to lose her to the man she despises, Nelson Barry. Facing the reality of losing Lily is more than the old woman is readily prepared 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 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
Lily expresses that a black Mary was never mentioned in her church. This explains the prejudice in the world and how it has always been that way. Lily begins to reflect on why her mother held a picture of a Black Mary. The Black Mary will lead her to the Boatwrights where she finds out how powerful the Black Mary
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.
Do you ever wonder how much you have changed in the past year? Not just physically, but in every aspect. Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd matures throughout the novel. Lily Owens matures because of her spiritual development. Also, she matures because of her social consciousness and her relationship with Zach. Sue Monk Kidd portrays the theme “coming of age” as difficult in The Secret Life of Bees.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a story about racial struggle between black and white in 1964, which is in the middle of the civil right movement in South Carolina. The narrator and protagonist of the story named Lily raised by T. Ray, her father, who has bias towards black people at all time. Due to the fact that T. Ray often says something regards to racial discrimination, Lily starts to thinks that whites are superior than the others unconsciously. Also Lily was not aware that she is being an unconscious racism because of T. Ray until she starts to live with Boatwright sisters who are black. T. Ray often takes his anger out on Lily since Deborah left the house and it trigged abuses and ignores Lily. Moreover, though T. Ray treats Lily so badly, he seems like and acts like he doesn’t care. In other words, it was impossible to feel any humanity in T. Ray. One of the most important and influential characters named T. Ray is prejudiced, violent and cruel person.
The Secret Life of Bees delineates an inspirational story in which the community, friendship and faith guide the human spirit to overcome anything. The story follows Lily Owens, a 14 year old girl who desperately wants to discover the cause of her mothers death. Her father T. Ray gives her no answers, which leads their maid, Rosaleen, to act as her guardian. Together, Lily and Rosaleen run away to Tiburon, South Carolina and find a welcoming community. It is in Tiburon that Lily learns many life lessons, including many about herself. In her novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd explores a theme of spiritual growth through Lily's search for home as well as a maternal figure.