Character Analysis Of The Secret Life Of Bees

(TS) In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens does not have an empathetic relationship with her parents as a result of the loss of her mother and an abusive father; however, Lily gains a new family figure, August Boatwright, who shows her the true empathy that is present between a parent and their child. (PS) Lily Owens’s absence of a mother and a “real” father causes Lily not to have a relationship with her parents that is filled with affection for one another. (SS) When Lily lost her mother, Deborah Fontell, she was told that she had shot and killed Deborah. (SS) Lily would say, “I would meet her saying, ‘Mother forgive. Please forgive,’” and she would kiss my skin till I grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame”

Lily starts to feel that she has developed a bond with the Boatwright sisters. Lily does not have a good relationship with her father. He makes her feel unwanted and abuses her verbally and physically. Lily’s father comes to the Boatwright’s residence and demands that Lily returns home with him but she refuses. The sisters inform the father that Lily can stay with them and they pledge to take good care of her, “ I still remember telling myself that when he drove away that day he wasn’t saying good riddance; he was saying, Oh, Lily, you’re better off in that house of coloured women. You never would have flowered with me like you will with them” (Kidd 299-300). Lily came to the realization that her father was not fit to provide her with the love and nurturing that she deserved. The sisters provided her with a loving environment where she feels protected. Also, the Boatwright sisters, especially August, are strong female role models. Lily will model her ideals, values and morals after the Boatwright

In the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character, Lily Owens struggles with the notion that she killed her mother and has to live with her abusive, neglectful father, T-Ray. Throughout, Lily searches for information about her mother and why she left her. Unexpectedly, she stumbles upon new mother figures that play an important role in changing Lily to the person she is in later. The typical sequence of a hero’s journey includes a departure, initiation and trials, and reintegration into society. By the end, Lily Owens developes into a more mature, independent young women after experiencing a difficult childhood.

“There is nothing perfect,’ August said from the doorway. ‘There is only life” (Kidd 256). This quote from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd explains Lily Owens life, a young girl with an unloving father and a mother who abandoned her and was later shot and killed by her own daughter, Lily. Lily has a hard time finding her place in the world and understanding why her life is the way it is. She decides it is time for her to take charge of her own life. She finds herself in Tiburon, South Carolina with her nanny Rosaleen and three black women, August, June and May who unravel the story to her mother’s past. Lily’s story can be seen in different layers, the most significant layers are the religious, thematic and symbolic layers. These three layers are essential when trying to gain understanding of The Secret Life of Bees.

In exactly fifty pages, Lily goes from, “My mother had left me. I hate her” (Kidd 251) to “… I have forgiven us both…” (Kidd 301). For the first thirteen of fourteen chapters, Lily hates her mother, and she makes this very clear. She directly tells August: “My mother had left me. I hate her” (Kidd 251). It’s not until August explains that Lily’s mother, Deborah, “... was practically skin and bone… And all she did was cry for a week,” that Lily starts to understand why she had to leave: she was being treated abusively by T. Ray (Kidd 252). Once Lily has this information, she begins the healing and forgiving process. This process is also helped along by Lily finally knowing the full truth about her mother’s mysterious death. The fact that Lily physically chases T. Ray as he’s about to leave the Boatwright’s house shows that she is ready to know, once and for all, the truth about her mother’s death. She is prepared for the possibility that she did in fact kill her mother. By allowing herself to know the truth, she forgives herself and her mother for leaving. She even says, “I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again” (Kidd 301). Progress in the process of Lily forgiving herself and her mom is clearly shown. Overall, she has condoned the actions of her mother, but still has little “flashbacks” or moments of weakness where she has to forgive

People make decisions everyday from simple things like whether or not to eat breakfast or larger decisions like whether or not to take the new promotion at work. These decisions are usually dawned upon us suddenly and we look to others to help decipher which decision is the ideal decision. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Melissa Owens is actuated by a variety of characters to make both ambiguous and venerable judgments throughout the novel. She did not do this on her own for she had people in her life communicating with her to finalize the verdicts on her decisions. Some of the persuaders were T. Ray, May, June, August, Zach, the Daughters of Mary, and even her mother, Deborah Fontanel Owens. Saying that, they all

When one looks up the definition for family it says a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household. Well August is the parent and June, Rosaleen, May, and Lily are all the children. We have a family right here. Motherhood was a motif that helped play into the theme of family in this book. Lily considers Rosaleen as a mother, yet Rosaleen is not as sophisticated as she wants a mother to be. Rosaleen is the person to help Lily when she is hurt, who defends Lily against her father, has the courage and strength to go and vote and is a motherly figure to Lily. August can be looked at as a mother too. She gives Lily wise wisdom, she is there for Lily through the pain about her mother, she teaches her about beekeeping, something her mother enjoyed too, she teaches her about religion, and the courage to be a leader. Lastly, her mother, Deborah is her real mother. She helps Lily realize that nobody is perfect and even mothers who love their kids need the courage to carry on. Lily learns from all these important figures that she just needs to be the best person she can be from all the wisdom and courage all these mothers help Lily understand. “I accidently killed her,” I said staring straight into her eyes. “Listen to me now,” said August, tilting my chin to her face. “That’s a terrible, terrible thing for you to live with. But you’re not unlovable. Even if you did accidently kill

"New beekeepers are told that the way to find the elusive queen is by first locating her circle of attendants." (57) This quote is at the beginning of chapter three and not only foreshadows many things to come, but within the quote, two of the novel’s main metaphors are mentioned, bees and the queen, which is referring to society and a mother figure. Although this quote is largely interpreted as a metaphor for Lily looking for a new queen or mother figure, and perhaps August being that mother, I believe that it has another meaning as well. I believe that the Black Madonna also serves as a “queen” and mother figure to all the women in “The Secret Life of Bees.”

Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees and Rascal Flatts "I'm Movin' On", both adequately demonstrate that a childhood of guilt can result in difficulty forgiving oneself and others. Overcoming inner conflicts as well as finding a place of belonging and contentment is a result that comes with self-forgiveness. The Secret Life of Bees is a story of a young girl named Lily Owens who, throughout the novel, faces immense obstacles. This novel focuses on the blurred memory Lily has of the death of her mother. In the novel, the reader learns that Lily was only a young child during the death of her mother and her emotionally abusive father, T. Ray, often tells her that this death was all her fault. T. Ray implements the idea that Lily was the one to who had accidentally shot her mother with a gun which causes her to grow up living with the guilt and shame of this traumatic event that took a very valuable life from her. As the plot intensifies, Lily and her strong-willed black caretaker, Rosaleen, decide to escape T. Rays sadistic tendencies and abusive behavior. After deciding to run away from T. Ray, Lily soon finds the Boatwright sisters who had a strong connection with Lily's mother before she died. While meeting the Boatwright sisters, Lily says, "I felt like she knew what a lying, murdering, hating person I really was. How I hated T. Ray, and the girls at school, but mostly myself for taking away my mother" (Kidd 71). This quote shows the destructive effect of being blamed

All throughout the book, The Secret Life of Bees, August Boatwright’s character is a very kind person who takes care of the people she cares about. August went to school to be a teacher but became a house maid instead. August worked for Lily’s mother’s family when she was younger, taking care of Deborah when her family wasn’t around. ..TRANSITION… Ever since Lily showed up on August’s

Earlier in the story Lily feels that Blacks aren’t smart or ever could be as intelligent as herself. “T. Ray did not think colored women were smart. Since I want to tell the whole truth, which means the worst parts, I thought they could be smart, but not as smart as me, me being white.” (Kidd 78). This quote reinforces the statement told before. As Lily is around the Boatwright's more she sees that blacks are like other people, skin color doesn’t matter. It shows the readers that Lily isn’t racist after all, she just had a prejudice view on them before she knew they were just like whites. “Lying on the cot in the honey house, though, all I could think was August is so intelligent, so cultured, and I was surprised by this. That’s what let me know I had some prejudice buried inside me”(Kidd 78). This quote from Lily shows us how she transformed her perspectives from having some racist views to no racism views at

In Chapter 10, we can see that Lily is starting to become enmeshed in the Boatwright’s family and culture, as a result of the very traumatic events that unfold. To begin with, during the night when Lily is sleeping, she wakes up with a start, thinking about May. She first thought about how she had died, but then thought about all the good memories she had of May like she had known her for the majority of her life. On page 199 it says "I closed my eyes, all the best pictures of her came to me. I saw her corkscrew braids glistening in the sprinkler, her fingers arranging the graham-cracker crumbs working so hard on behalf of a single roach's life." This indicates that Lily felt like family to May and that she knew May and what type of person

Lily comes to know three incredible women called the Boatwrights. Their names are August, June, and May. Lily became closest to August although she was close to May and June, also. Lily felt as though August had a comforting and consoling way about her. August once told Lily “Actually, you can be bad at something...but if you love doing it, that will be enough.” (Kidd 111). Her motivational life advice helped to guide Lily. Furthermore, August had to be the one to tell Lily that they had lost May; May had killed herself. Lily did not take the news so well. Lily claimed she had started to “shiver…[she] could feel the teeth in [her] mout, crashing against each other.” (Kidd 193).

Emanuel agrees in her paper “The archetypal mother: the Black Madonna in Sue Monk Kidd 's The Secret Life of Bees” saying that “[Kidd] speaks at length about a woman’s plight in both conventional society,”(Catherine B. Emanuel). August understands this progress of injustice. While talking to Lily about her life, August confesses that she did love a man. “I loved him enough. I just loved my freedom more”(146). This shows that August had to decide whether she wanted to have her freedom or to be married. Kidd writing about a black woman that choose a career over the traditional lifestyle of a women reinforce the notice that anyone can improve and innovate the world as much as white man. In the novel, August shows Lily that a woman can do anything a man can do by breaking from conventional ideas that a women can live a successful life without a man is normal. Laurie Grobman agreed in her essay in “Teaching Cross-Racial Texts: Cultural Theft in ‘The Secret Life of Bees” by saying that “August fits Levy’s description of the ‘model of female creativity, the repository of women 's history and the provider of mother enduring care,”(21). August is a role model to encourage women to break the mold of what a woman is supposed to be.

The Secret Life of Bees begins in the town of Sylvan, South Carolina and tells the story of 14-year-old Lily Melissa Owens. She lives on a peach orchard with her neglectful and abusive father, T. Ray. They have Black maid named Rosaleen who is a companion and caretaker of Lily. The book opens with Lily's discovery of bees in her bedroom and the story of how she killed her mother. The eve before her birthday Lily sneaks out into the peach orchard to visit the box of her mother’s belongings which is buried there however before she can hide them T. Ray finds her and punishes her. The next day Rosaleen and Lily head into town where Rosaleen is arrested for pouring her bottle of tobacco spit on three white men. Lily breaks her out of prison and they begin hitchhiking toward Tiburon, SC, a town Lily had seen on the back of a picture of a black Virgin Mary which her mom had owned. They hitch a ride to Tiburon and once there, they buy lunch at a general store, and Lily sees a picture of the same Virgin Mary on a jar of honey. She asks the store owner where it came from and he gives her directions to the Boatwright house. They then meet the makers of the honey: August, May and June Boatwright, who are all black. Lily makes up a wild story about being recently orphaned. The sisters welcome Rosaleen and Lily into their home. They are then introduced to beekeeping and the Boatwright’s way of life. Lily learns more about the Black Madonna honey that the sisters make. She begins working