Secret Life Of Bees Movie And Book Comparison Essay

In this essay I will explore how the author of the novel The Secret Life of Bees develops the idea that all human actions have intended and unintended consequences by comparing and contrasting the actual novel with the film. I have selected three scenes from both the novel and the book. The scenes that I use from the book are narrated by the main character, Lily Owens.

The first of the scenes I selected is about May drowning herself. May Boatwright is an incredibly sensitive woman. She seems to feel the pain of everything/everyone. Kidd’s book narration of this event reads: “May lay in the river, just beneath the surface. Her eyes were wide open and unblinking, and the dress of her skirt fanned out and swayed in the current” (Kidd, 192). May’s suicide was unexpected, it left August Boatwright, June Boatwright, Lily, and Rosaleen in shock. Lily narrates in the novel how August Boatwright reacts to her youngest sister’s suicide in

A telling weakness in the film is when Zack gets kidnapped. It is assumed, only based on earlier evidence from the reading of the novel that there had been a rumor flying around town about a black man who would bring a white woman to town. Segregation was still very strong in the world, even though black people were starting to get more rights. The thought of a black man and a white woman together just seemed awful to parts of the white people. The white men that kidnapped Zach assumed that they were the people from the rumor. If I had not read the novel, I would not have understood this part. A strength from the film is how the director made it seem that T.Ray loved Lily, even though he never showed it. T.Ray said “happy birthday” in an almost caring tone. Another example of this effort was when he tried to find Lily by putting up the map, instead of looking through the phone bill and finding her name as he did in the