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 …show more content…
There are many reasons backing up the opinion that he shouldn't. Even though he only showed up in the beginning and the end of the book, he has always been what kept Lily from living a happy life without her mother. T-Ray was the main reason, besides wanting to know more about Deborah, that Lily and Rosaleen left. Not to mention, he was also what encouraged Deborah to leave as well. The little things that he also did all added up to making him a horrible father. If he is compared to a father that actually loves his daughter, that type of father would punish her daughter for doing something morally wrong by taking away her privileges for a time, but T-Ray physically punishes Lily for irrelevant things. The reader can hardly find anything good about T-Ray but if the reader chooses to find the sympathy for him, it can be found deeper into the end of the story. When he finds out where Lily is staying, with August Boatwright, his mind quickly goes into thinking that Lily is Deborah because of his past experience. He already knows how it feels to be left by one person and once Lily left him too, all those same feelings that he had when Deborah was gone came back to him. This shows sensitivity to T-Ray because although it can be argued that he deserved what he got, it reveals that he is hurt by what Deborah and Lily did. Also, in the very end of the story, he choses to let Lily live in the Boatwright’s house because he finally understands that she deserves a better home with someone that can treat her
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.
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
Home in The Secret Life of Bees Sonsyrea Tate’s statement about “home” aligns with Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees. In this novel, the main character, Lily Owens, embarks on a Bildungsroman journey after leaving her birth home to find her true identity and “home.” The idea of “home” guides Lily on a path of self-discovery and leads her to the pink house and the feminine society that lies within, in which she finds true empowerment and womanhood in her life. “Home” plays an important role in Lily’s journey throughout the novel. Lily feels lost and alone at the Peach House with T. Ray because of his continuous physical and mental abuse.
At the beginning of each chapter, there is an epigraph. The epigraph connects to an event or theme that happens during that chapter. For example, before chapter 6, it says, “The queen must produce some substance that attracts the workers” (102). In this chapter, the queen is referencing the statue Mary, who holds the black community together through her strength and protection. After the statue was placed in the praise house, each person would go up to her, touch her heart, and feel strong. As a result, many of the bold slaves fled, and others received support from her. Because of Mary offering this bravery and strength, the slaves would praise her each day, staying close to her. Before chapter 7, the epigraph is “How did bees ever become equated with sex?
In The Secret Life of Bees, Lily felt abandoned when her father, T.Ray failed to exhibit affection and abused her. Some details she mentioned early on, being that: “I had asked God repeatedly to do something about T.Ray. He’d gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse.” When Lily undertook in an activity that irked or agitated T.Ray, he would force her to kneel on Grits, which she reported was utterly painful. Despite her dilemmas, Lily’s main concern in life was to find out if she was definitely the root of her mother, Deborah’s, death. When she questioned T.Ray about this he alleged, “The truth is, your mother ran off and left you.” This left Lily feeling heartbroken by her
The setting in the Secret life of bees helps set the overall structure of the book. As the setting changes, and certain events take place, so does the characters views on life. The most change seen is on Lily, the main character. Her values multiply and her perspective on cultural order shifts from one mind set to another. Although one part of the book’s setting limits the opportunities of the characters; the other part opens those and different opportunities. The setting in The Secret Life of Bees is vitally important because it impacts the main character and the people around her through events that transpire in the book.
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.
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.
Grief leaves an imprint on those who experience it. Some can survive its deep sorrow, others cannot. In The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, she explores the effect of grief on the main characters. The novel opens with fourteen-year-old Lily Owns struggling with the knowledge that her mother was dead because she, as an infant, picked up a loaded gun and accidentally shot her. She runs away from her abusive father in search for answers of who her mother was. Lily hitchhikes to Tiburon, South Carolina; the location written on the back of an image of the Black Madonna – one of the only belongings she has of her mother’s. There, she finds a pink house inhabited by the Boatwright sisters who are African American women making Black Madonna honey. The Boatwright sisters have had their share of grief with the death of two of their sisters and the racial intolerance they face despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Boatwright sisters and Lily Owens have different methods of coping with grief; internalizing, ignoring, and forgetting are some of the ways they cope, with varying degrees of success. They discover that they must live past their grief, or else it will tear them apart.
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.
Classics explore aspects of human identity and reveal how people struggle with mistakes and pain, how people realize their own childishness, and how to learn from mistakes. The Secret Life of Bees, set in the American South in 1964 amid racial unrest, tells story of Lily Owens, a white 14-year-old girl who is searching for the truth about her deceased mother. She lives on a peach farm with her cruel and abusive father, T. Ray, who tells Lily that she accidentally shot her mother, Deborah, when she was four. Lily accompanies the family’s black housekeeper, Rosaleen, to town to register to vote. Taunted by white men, she spills the contents of her snuff jar on their feet, is beaten, taken to jail,
The novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, is set in Sylvan, South Carolina, in 1964. The story is told from the point of view of Lily Owens, a fourteen year old young woman. She lives with her father who she calls T.Ray and always treats her badly. Rosaleen acted as “a stand in mother (2) “ for Lily since her mother, Deborah Owen’s, death when she was young. One day Lily finds some items that belonged to her mom; a picture of her mother when she was young, her mother's gloves and necklace and a picture of a black women that had the face of Mary on it, which Lily to be the most interesting item. On the back of the picture the word “Tiburon” is written. T.Ray told Lily that her mother left their family and the day she was killed, she
It was a luminous and buzzy day for the bees in the Buzzing Bees hive. Amelia Buzzbee, one of the many worker bees, was pollinating the plants, and making honey that was needed for the hive. After many hard hours of work, it was finally time for Amelia Buzzbee to go to sleep. She had the same nightmare over and over again, that the hive would collapse and she would have nowhere to go. Amelia Buzzbee woke up at the crack of dawn, and had flown out to the field to start pollinating the plants when all of the sudden Jeremy, the drone bee, who was supposed to be doing his job, mating with the queen bee, had dashed up to her.
Come on lets go! Me and my brother were racing therew the forest to see who can find a bee hive.''I found one my brother yelled ''. I gasped when i saw the hive.It It was the biggest bee hive the two of us could find .Mmm i could smell the honey so nice and sweet .BZZZZZ, BZZZZZBZZZZ , all we heard for a while was the pleasnt sound of bee of bees buzzing.Josh my brother was trying to juggle, when all of a sudden one rockhit the bee hive. And all of worker bees came out and tried to sting us, twelve bees got me and 11 got Josh.We both got knocked out bad, Josh mustive woken up before me because he woke me up. It was ethier night time or just really early in the morning.The hive was conpletely fine.We started to wonder how many bees can live
The hive structure is simple, yet breathtaking in its beauty. A wild hive can most inside a tree, a cave, in a deep dark crevice or even in the attics or sides of buildings. Bees prefer to make their homes in protected areas so they are safe. A wild beehive consists of several lobes of honeycomb that provide a secure, clean area for the bees to raise their young and store their food. Sounds kind of like people behavior to me. Honeycomb is built of many tiny hexagonal cells that function as storage spaces for honey and pollen as well as birthing chambers for the bee larvae. The size of the individual cells will vary depending upon the bees and their needs. We will talk a bit more about that later.