Summary: The Secret Life Of Bees

Often, famous novels go through the process of becoming movies. On the outside world of the film, fans of the novel and people who want to see the movie are running around in excitement, but behind the scenes there is a lot more than what meets the eye. Behind the scenes, screenwriters are doing their best to make an appealing movie, studio executives are deciding whether or not to keep the movie in the works and the authors who originally wrote the novel are hoping that the plot of the movie doesn’t stray too far from the plot of the novel. Many of the book lovers who are awaiting the release of the movie want the plot of the movie to stay true to the plot of the novel. In Can Authors Control How Their Work Is Adapted for Film?, it says that
In the novel, Zach is arrested outside of the theater where his friend threw a bottle at a white man after being threatened by the white man. In this scenario, Zach was arrested due to the racism at the time. In this scene, Lily observes the moments leading up to Zach’s arrest from the safety of the pickup truck. “He chose to stand there and be one of them. I watched the policeman put Zach and the other three boys in his car” (180T). In the book scene, Zach decided to stand against the racism and stay at his friend’s side. In the film, however, Zach decides to take Lily to the movies. Before they get to the movies, Lily tells Zach the truth about her past, whereas, in the book, August tells Zach when he gets back from jail. At the theater, Zach sits with Lily in the Whites Only section and is then abducted by men with clubs. This change was most likely to please the audience as well as lower the movie’s rating. The scene in the movie was much more romantic than the one in the novel since Zach and Lily are spending quality time with each other. Audiences tend to like seeing a romantic scene since it makes the movie more entertaining. The leading purpose of many movies is to entertain people. Including the bottle throwing scene
Ray is shown to be hitting peaches with a baseball bat, in order to possibly fill in one of the missing scenes. In the novel, we get the scene where Lily calls T. Ray at the law office and he picks up the phone. “You tell me where you are right now, do you hear me? Do you have any idea the trouble you’re in?... You were a fool who went looking for trouble and you found it. Because of you, I can’t walk down the streets in Sylvan without people staring at me. I had to stop everything and search for you all over creation” (159B- 160T). This scene from the book shows just how angry T. Ray is about Lily running away. In the film, we do not get this scene. Instead, we are given the scene where Lily goes to beekeep with August and Zach in the morning. The entire lawyer scene was cut out. Since the lawyer’s office scene was key to showing T. Ray’s anger, another clip would have to replace it. The lawyer’s office scene might have been taken out to save time for more important scenes and the clip with T. Ray hitting peaches might have replaced the lawyer scene in order to show T. Ray’s anger while saving time and money. The scene with T. Ray hitting peaches was much shorter than what would have been the scene with Lily talking to him at the lawyer’s office. More dialogue would have had to be written and more actors would have had to be paid. By replacing and adding in this scene, we not only get a sense of how T.