In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, the author tries to reach out to the reader and send multiple messages with meaning behind them. One of the most important messages that the author tries to send to the reader is the importance of bonds between women, and the significance of a mother figure. When Lily’s mother Deborah dies, Lily no longer has a mother figure in her life to look up to until Rosaleen comes along. When Rosaleen becomes Lily’s mother figure, Lily looks up to her and builds a strong and lasting bond with Rosaleen, due to the absence of her mother. Rosaleen loves and cares for Lily, as she does the same.…
One of the main literary elements in Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees, is conflict. The author displays this conflict through racial prejudice, Lily Owens and her father, Terrence Ray Owens (T. Ray), and through Lily and her mother, Deborah Fontanel. This book is set in 1964, when African American’s had just gotten the right to vote. T. Ray and Lily lived just outside Sylvan, South Carolina (The Secret Life of Bees, page…
special outside washroom just for black people and not letting black people into stores or hotels in The Secret Life of Bees. Black maids are not allowed to use whites’ washroom and the guest washroom as white people think they carry ‘disease’ that will transmit to them through using the same toilet. “‘I did not raise you to use the colored bathroom!’ I hear her hiss-whispering, thinking I can't hear, and I think, Lady, you didn't raise your child at all. ‘This is dirty out here, Mae Mobley. You'll catch diseases!’” (Stocklett 102). Miss Leefolt does not allow her daughter, Mae Mobley, to use Aibileen’s washroom as she thinks black people carry disease. Black maids cannot use their employers’ washroom either so they have to use their special…
Lily Owens is lying in her bed watching bees squeeze in and out of cracks in her walls. She thinks about her mother, who died when Lily was a child. She also thinks about Rosaleen, a black woman who looks after her and her father, T. Ray. When the bees begin to swarm around Lily, she wakes T. Ray to show him but when he comes, the bees are gone. He threatens to make her kneel in grits if she wakes him again. Lily decides she will catch some bees in a jar to prove she was not making up the story. She starts to think about the day her mother died. She was packing hurridly when T. Ray comes home and they start fighting. Lily there was a gun, picking it up, and an explosion.…
In The Secret Life of Bees Lily, the protagonist deals with an unsettling amount of inevitable parental conflicts. In the beginning of the novel, Lily runs away from home to escape a abusive father who constantly mistreated her, to find a way to discover the true meaning behind her mothers death. The author makes parental conflict a trouble for Lily throughout the whole novel. Lily has the guilt of believing she accidentally killed her own mother. She is sourced of the information considering her deceased mother, given to her by August and T-Ray, her feeling of being unwanted, and her feeling of the need to feel the love of a family.…
The Secret Life of Bees is a novel written by Sue Monk Kidd that was published in 2001. It is about a girl named Lily who runs away from home with her maid Rosaleen. They wanted to get away from danger and racism. In the house, Lily finds out secrets about her dead mother and tries to learn more about her. The story shows a lot of cruelty. When an author uses their writing to represent cruelty in a story, it can be helpful in contributing to the overall theme or message. The cruelty that occurs in the story is racism, and it helps develop the theme of anyone can overlook stereotypes. In the book cruelty is shown when the three men are harassing Rosaleen on her way to register to vote, and when Lily was afraid to tell anyone that she and…
When I was in first grade my entire class went on a field trip to Bee City Honeybee Farm, Petting Zoo, and Nature Center. On that field trip, we learned a lot about bees, (though now that I’m older, I recall just about one thing from that entire trip) and other animals.…
In the novel The Secret life of Bees there are many different themes in the novel but my two favorite ones are female power and race-based prejudice. In female power you see Rosaleen being lily mother even though she is not her mother but she does it because she loves lily and August giving her knowledge and helping her be strong so that she can be good in the world. Then another female power is lily asking for her mother forgiveness for killing her and remembering her mother. The other theme in the novel would be Race-based prejudice. On how Lily was growing up in the south where races were divided by the laws and how other people would have their attitude on different race.…
The poet Maya Aneton once said “It [is] one of the greatest gifts [a person] can give [him or herself] to forgive. Forgive everybody.” It is difficult sometimes for people to forgive themselves for past issues or transgressions. The result often becomes an inability to exculpate others as well. However, if a person can seek forgiveness, then happiness will become more apparent in his or her life. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd demonstrates how contentment becomes prevalent in a person's life through the characters Lily and June once they seek forgiveness. Lily, a fourteen-year-old runaway white girl, not only struggles to forgive herself, but her father, T Ray, and her mother for their wrongdoings in her lifetime. Similarly, June, one of the Boatwright sisters that takes in Lily when she runs away, strives to pardon her ex fiance and Lily’s mother due to the undeserved way they treated June in her past.…
Memories are the piece of our soul who make us who we are. I have chosen to explore the theme ‘Memories and the past can affect the future’. This theme is evident in the novels The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Before You by Amber Hart and If I Stay by Gayle Forman. It is also apparent in the film The Time Traveller’s Wife directed by Robert Schwentke.…
Society’s way of thinking intensely about identity, places individuals in specific gender roles. Historically, gender identification has been socially constructed within individuals in a society. The debate on expectations embedded in society has been discussed constantly in the past. During the late 19th century, identity roles have changed with an innumerable influential number of women who fought in numerous ways for the same rights that men were effortlessly granted. The roles of females have also changed significantly for gender equality; however, in the 21st century, women and men are still not considered equal. Also, gender equality differs across cultures as women and men are stereotyped according to the roles they must assume in the society. However, both sexes are still expected to exude a character that is defined by societal expectations, restraints, and religious values.…
Just like most civilized people I dislike bugs. Actually I really hate them! Just thinking about them gets me all itchy and uncomfortable, and yet one summer evening I would find myself sticking my hands right into their dark slimy lair. I swear God has a weird sense of humor at times. But I guess he knew me well enough to know that I hate dead kittens more than those nasty creepy crawly slimy BUGS! This is my story about the night I became a life saver and was able to overcome my fear of creepy nasty bugs….at least for a few minutes.…
I can speak in front of an audience about Best Buddies, or be put on the spot and not flinch. I can go on a mission trip across the world, see poverty, anguish and violence yet not be afraid. I can learn to get along with my peers despite very strong contradictions in our ethics and styles. I can watch late night episodes of criminal minds and stay home alone with not an ounce of fear. But, there is one thing that makes shivers go up my body, tears stream down my face and my whole body just freeze.…
When I was going up in Minnesota, I would often travel to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area located in the northern part of the state. This area is approximately 150 miles of the most beautiful and calming National Forests in the United States. This is where I had my first interaction with an owl. I heard it before I was able to finally see it. I remember trying to sleep at night and hearing the loud “hoot, hoot, hoot, hooooo” as it kept me awake. My dad had to tell me what it was. As I was saw my first owl the very next day, sitting high above in the tree, I never knew that I would someday be writing about it.…
I am passionate. struggles in life leave mental and emotional scars. as for me, having a sense of passion or a strong spirit have helped me make it through the day or where I am right now. failure may come my way but it is through passion that I will move beyond my shortcomings.…