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Literary Analysis of The Secret Life of Bees

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Literary Analysis of The Secret Life of Bees
“The Secret Life of Bees” Literary Analysis Essay Inevitable conflicts with parents happen frequently in the lives of many adolescents. In the novel “The Secret Life of Bees,” a young girl named Lily Owens runs away from home, leaving her abusive father behind, on a hunt for more connections to her dead mother, Deborah. Kidd places obstacles of parental conflict for Lily throughout her whole novel. Lily battles with the internal conflict of the knowledge that she killed her own mother and the struggle in finding out the truth. The sources of her conflict with her dead mother include the information she receives from August and T. Ray, her sense of feeling unwanted, and her longing to experience love of a family. Sue Monk Kidd uses this conflict to show that during Lily’s strife to overcome her conflicts she finds herself and realizes that she already has a complete family. Kidd does this to relay a message to the readers so that they may understand that the mother Lily searched for lay inside of her after all and she is able to create her own power, proving the strength in women. In “The Secret Life of Bees,” Kidd uses the information Lily receives from her father T. Ray and August to create and further fuel the conflict between Lily and Deborah so that the reader understands the strength in the unity and also individuality of women. The conflict begins when Lily discovers from T. Ray that she was the one to kill her mother by accidently shooting her (Kidd 18-19). She later learns from T. Ray that Deborah had ran away, leaving Lily, and had only come back for her things and not her daughter when she had shot her (Kidd 39). During the novel, Lily keeps a strong distaste for her father and does not believe him when he tells her this. However, Lily does begin to feel worthless and as if she were a horrible child as the idea of her killing her own mother grows on her. She then learns the truth after she runs away from home and finds a family of women who knew


Cited: Kidd, Sue M. The Secret Life of Bees. New York: Penguin Group, 2008. Print
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