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The Secret Life of Bees- Coming of Age

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The Secret Life of Bees- Coming of Age
English 9- CPA
9/13/10
The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
“In a matter of seconds I knew exactly what I had to do-leave. I had to get away from T. Ray, who was probably on his way back this minute to do Lord-knows-what to me.” (p. 41). When people come of age, they follow through with their actions that they think are right for their welfare. In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens, a fourteen-year-old girl, had always done things behind her father’s back to avoid inhumane punishments. She never wanted to tell T. Ray, her father, about her whereabouts, because he never approved, or believed her. And every time she told her T. Ray about things she thought she would not get in trouble for, she would receive a punishment anyway because her father never trusted her. Her mother, who was accidently shot by Lily at age 4, was a forbidden topic in her house, but when Lily found some object that were her mother’s in the attic, she felt somehow closer to her. Every night she would sneak out of the house, to look at those objects while being sure that T. Ray would never find out, but one night she fell asleep under a tree, and her T. Ray was furious when he found her. “In a matter of seconds I knew exactly what I had to do-leave. I had to get away from T. Ray, who was probably on his way back this minute to do Lord-knows-what to me.” (p. 41). She knew what she had to do instantly. All her life she was harmed and beaten by T. Ray, and she knew that it would be in her best interest to leave T. Ray, before he did something truly awful. She left, and never thought about going back to her home. She did, however, have a moment of weakness when she was making honey deliveries with Zack, a fellow worker of the business the family she was staying with owned. She called T. Ray, but when she found out he did not want her back, she realized had no regrets of leaving T. Ray. She knew what was best for her, and going back to live with T. Ray, was not one of

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