Chris Cleave's The Other Hand

Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of a 14-year-old white girl, Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of her mother's death. Lily meets new people and they help her realize who she is and how the world is around her. Throughout the novel Kidd uses Lily’s various situations to express the theme. Kidd uses imagery, symbolism and similes to express the overall theme which is forgiveness and love.

Also Charlie is one of the most menial kids around he would never go with Jasper if he didn’t have courage. All of the choices Charlie makes impact his life in some way for example; if he didn’t go with Jasper his life would be normal, but because of one simple decision his life changed forever with the fact that he hid a body hovering over him at all times.

Batman is a depiction of hope. Batman was the answer to a lot of people’s problems in a place where nobody felt safe like they should in their home. He was like the rain after a long, dry spell for

This motif ties directly to a major theme of fear that is very present in Charlie’s life. The argument whether ends with Batman being more brave because he is mortal and has his life to worry about in comparison to Superman who is invincible and thus has nothing to worry about. This is a perfect example of Charlie Bucktin’s discovery of how to deal with fear in which there is no way to eliminate fear, but there are ways to minimize and overcome fears. Also by Charlie realizing that everyone has fears helps him act courageously and quickly. The incorporation of fear as a theme really gives the story some substance and shows the development of Charlie Bucktin.

While some would read it otherwise, this essay argues that The Secret Life of Bees is not about a 14-year-old girl running away from her abusive father; it is a lesson about loss and how to cope with it. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens leaves her home on a peach farm with her family’s black housekeeper, Rosaleen, searching for information about her mother. After Rosaleen is put in prison because of a confrontation with three racist men, they break out and leave the city. They eventually settle with a group of Black Beekeeping Sisters for a summer before Lily’s father, T. Ray, comes to find her and take her home. During this journey, Lily and the community around her experience loss after loss, both tangible and intangible.

I, Noura Khajehnouri have an ordinary life. Like most people I wake up, go to school, eat, sleep and restart this cycle every day. I never experience something that can shake me to the core or make my hands tremble like a gun is pointed at me. Whereas, Little Bee has had a gun pointed at her multiple times, therefore this feeling that is like a stranger to me, is her best friend. When Little Bee is travelling to Sarah’s place, she says “I just fixed the motorway in my mind as a place I could run back to and kill myself very easily if the men suddenly came..”(82). At sixteen years old, Little Bee witness’ events that are so horrid, they don’t even appear in my nightmares. This is why she finds different scenarios to kill herself if ‘the men’ come after her. She would rather commit suicide then to be taken by the ‘men’ who she horrifically witnesses’ murdering her family. On the other hand, I can’t relate to Sarah either because I have never

Her father, a successful businessman, never appears to be home from work, and spends little time attempting to connect with his daughter. As well, his reckless attitude towards parenting is seen when he openly cheats on Bee’s mom with a woman from work. Bee’s mom, who's many struggles stem from her past architecture career, suddenly escapes to Antarctica with notifying her family, causing chaos for Bee and her Dad. Upon her mothers sudden disappearance, Bee is put in boarding school. The byproduct of Bee’s neglect by her parents is seen when she is in boarding school, and is described by the headmaster in a letter to Bee’s father. The headmaster states, “Yet from Bee’s first week, I received reports that she was failing to thrive in the boarding school environment. Teachers said Bee sat in the back and never took notes.” (Semple 335). This shows how Bee is unable to function correctly without the support of her parents. Although she had a reputation for being a great student, the absence of Bee’s parents cause her to suddenly lose motivation to do well, and bring her unusual mood changes. To further outline Bee’s unusual behavior, the headmaster also writes, “I watched her bringing food back to her dorm room instead of eating the dining hall with the other students.” (Semple 335). Due to the fact the she

Charlie is not a normal person unlike other people he has special needs he is going to get an operation so he can be smarter and fall in love with miss kinnian. If i would have a chance to get an operation like that i would not take the chance because the operation will go away and i'll be dumb again.

Little Bee learns the way of life in the detention center, “To survive you must look good or talk good, I decided that talking would be safer for me. I made myself undesirable. I declined to wash, and I let my skin grow oily. Under my clothes I wound a wide strip of cotton around my chest, to make my breasts small and flat" (Cleave 6). Little Bee makes her own identity in order for other to perceive her poorly.

In a similar sense, both Little Bee and the narrator are placed in situations that helps compensate for their traumatic experiences. In Little Bee, Little Bee is in a position where she is desperately in need of help. Wherever she goes, suicidal thoughts follow “quote”. That when she is taken in by Sarah, another protagonist, and her son Charlie. Sarah provides

Another way in which Batman displays himself as a Byronic hero is his function as a subversive character which refuses to submit to demonic forces. He tries to appear to be a man who is morally upright. However, Batman is unable to separate himself from the pain of his parents ' untimely death, which gives him a new identity as a mysterious masked crime fighter. In most books and films, he tries to put this tragic incident behind him without much success. As Peter J. Tomasi indicates, “instead we see a presentation of Batman’s powers by exacting strange acts in the name of justice like teleporting hotheaded” (1).

The cooperation between them is what still remains a mystery to the girl, but who would want to question the loveliness of what a friendship is capable of uniting two souls. The girl even till now only wishes that to continue to create memories together with Honeybee and to preserve them as long as she could. The little girl had first found Honeybee from the little chaos of the high school they both attended, Pocatello High School, which was located in a small town of Pocatello, Idaho. The two had lived there most of their lives and still had yet to explore the masses of small, seceret places the town had to share.

The ending of Little Bee is about when Little Bee is taken by the police and forced on a plane back to Nigeria for illegal immigrant deportation. Sarah O'Rourke and her son Charlie end up leaving the man Sarah had an affair with to go protect Little Bee. Once they arrived at the airport, Sarah threatens the guards that since she is a reporter, that she will make Little Bee’s story go public so that Sarah can stay in the same hotel as Little Bee. Every day, Sarah is giving the guards money so they can go out and explore Nigeria to find women and children with similar stories as Little Bee. One day, Little Bee wants to go to the beach her sister was raped and killed at to say goodbye one last time.

Little Bee is narrated by Little Bee and Sarah in alternating chapters. While throughout the novel Lawrence and Sarah fail to do the right thing of being considerate, Little Bee succeeds by telling her impactful story because she puts herself before others while being selfless.

From the beginning, the reader can clearly distinguish the main theme of racism in The Secret Life of Bees. Kidd first introduces racism in Chapter One when three white men insult Rosaleen on her way to town to register to vote. Lily describes the attack that follows narrating, “They lunged at her... Rosaleen lay sprawled on the ground, pinned, twisting her fingers around clumps of grass. Blood ran from a cut beneath her eye,” (33).