The Sting of Prejudice Even 100 years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in southern states still lived in an unequal world full of segregation and various forms of oppression. Sue Monk Kidd is an American novelist who personally witnessed the brutal cruelty of racism while growing up in the south in 1964. She explains that her novel, “The Secret Life of Bees,” was a way to “give redemption” towards the African Americans she grew up with. The protagonist of the novel, Lily is a 14 year old girl who struggles between following the stereotypes of the south, and listening to her own moral compass. Growing up in South Carolina in 1964, Lily is exposed to racism and ignorance, which cause her to question the social standings
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a book discussing the internal strife of a young white girl, in a very racist 1960’s south. The main character, Lily Owens, faces many problems she must overcome, including her personal dilemma of killing her own mother in an accident. Sue Monk Kidd accurately displays the irrationality of racism in the South during mid- 1960's not only by using beautiful language, but very thoroughly developed plot and character development. Kidd shows the irrationality of racism through the characters in her book, The Secret Life of Bees and shows that even during that time period, some unique people, were able to see beyond the heavy curtain of racism that separated people from each
In The Secret Life of bees you can learn a lot from the thematic layer. Three salient themes in this layer are forgiveness, hope and strength. Hope is shown when Zach talks to Lily about becoming a lawyer one day, “I’ve just never heard of a Negro lawyer, that’s all. You’ve got to hear of these things before you can imagine them’ ‘Bullshit. You gotta imagine what’s never been” (Kidd 121). Zach has hope that one day he will become a lawyer despite his skin color and what everyone else says about it. He doesn’t give up because of what society thinks, he stays hopeful. During this time period African Americans had to keep hope that one day the racism
In the novel The Secret life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character Lily uses the symbolism of bees to convey her transition from a prejudiced mindset against African Americans to one of acceptance. This novel shows the different attitudes of people towards African Americans in 1964. Lily goes through the journey of discovering new perspectives and finding that African Americans are not what people portray them to be.
Haunted by the her own memories, Lily Owens finds comfort in the humming of the bees. In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd writes about the life of young girl whose spontaneous decisions lead her to her mother’s past. Lily’s life has revolved around the lack of a mother. Her father, T. Ray, is a harsh and unloving peach farmer who punishes Lily unreasonably and does not fulfil his father like position. Lily’s adventure begins after catching a few bees in a jar. She empathizes with them as they are stuck and alone, something she understands all too well. On the day of her birthday, Lily and her negro nanny, Rosaleen, go out into town to register for voting. Rosaleen and Lily are on their way when a group of white men begin to harass Rosaleen and degrade her for being a negro. Rosaleen pours her spit jug on the shoes of the man and is given no mercy when she is beaten. With Rosaleen ending up in jail, Lily returns to the comfort of the bees once again. As she opens the jar and watches the bees escape, Lily follows suit and flees from home. She breaks Rosaleen out of the hospital and they hitchhike their way to Tiburon, South Carolina. Lily believes that her mother, Deborah, had once visited Tiburon and where she had obtained a picture of a Black Madonna. Lily has spent her whole life looking for new information and connections between herself and her mother. With luck and fate on her side, Lily finds the home of the Boatwright sisters, the creators of the Black
In The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd’s focuses on prejudice through descriptive comparison and a shift in tone to reveal the harsh and racist standards of the society in the book. In doing so, Kidd describes the racial prejudice that those of a minority has faced due to the majority’s biases and ignorance. In the novel, our main character, Lily Owens, runs away from home with Rosaleen and lives with the Boatwright sisters in Tiburon, South Carolina. The Boatwright sisters, however, are colored women and Lily is a young, white female. One of the sisters, August, sparks her interest and Lily describes her as “so intelligent [and is] so cultured” (Kidd 78). As Lily thinks to herself, she explains her father’s prejudice against colored women
In the book The Secret Life of Bees the author brings to light the Jim Crow era in which Lily, the main character, lives in and is influenced by the world around her.
Throughout the novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the characters are determined to achieve a goal or get some answers in some way. The novel’s main character and narrator is Lily Owens, a fourteen year old girl; the story is set in South Carolina during the summer of 1964. During this summer, Lily searches for answers about her mother’s life. Hardships cause people to show their determination in life because they strive to achieve a specific goal as demonstrated by Lily, T. Ray, and Rosaleen.
In the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, how people treat other people because of race can be found throughout almost the whole book. How people view another person's race is a big part of society. It is unfortunate that people of a certain race treat other people of a different race poorly. One example of race injustice is when Lily meets Zach, she is shocked that he is attractive because in her mind, black people were not supposed to be attractive. When Lily first meets Zach she thought, “If he was shocked over me being white, I was shocked over him being handsome.
The fictional novels “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd and “The Chosen” by Chaim Potok are coming of age stories about young protagonists. “The Secret Life of Bees” depicts the life of Lily Owens as she runs away from her abusive father, T. Ray, with her black caregiver, Rosaleen. Lily is seeking a connection to her dead mother while establishing new relationships in a new town called Tiburon, SC. Similarly, ‘The Chosen” portrays the journey of Danny Saunders as he breaks away from the path paved for him while coping with the lack of a father-son relationship. Within both novels, “The Secret Life of Bees” and “The Chosen”, the lack of parental figures in both Lily and Danny’s lives causes both protagonists to seek others to fill in these positions as seen when Lily relies on Rosaleen, the Black Madonna, and the Boatwright sisters and Danny seeks support from Reuven’s family.
In The Secret Life of Bees written by Sue Monk Kidd, we see a variety of racism. The Catholic Socical Teaching, respect for the dignity of human life, relates to the social justiuce issue, Racism within The Secret Life of Bees. As present in the book, blacks are treated unjustly by the whites. This treatment was common for blacks in throughout the country, but especially within the novel during the Civil Right Movement. Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secrect Life of Bees demonstrates racism with Rosaleens failed attempt to register to vote, June’s treatment toward Lily, and Lily and Zach not able to be togther.
The Secret Life of Bees delineates an inspirational story in which the community, friendship and faith guide the human spirit to overcome anything. The story follows Lily Owens, a 14 year old girl who desperately wants to discover the cause of her mothers death. Her father T. Ray gives her no answers, which leads their maid, Rosaleen, to act as her guardian. Together, Lily and Rosaleen run away to Tiburon, South Carolina and find a welcoming community. It is in Tiburon that Lily learns many life lessons, including many about herself. In her novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd explores a theme of spiritual growth through Lily's search for home as well as a maternal figure.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a book about a girl named Lily and the troubles she faces. The story takes place in the 1960’s and during that time period there was a lot of racism and segregation going on especially in the southern part of the United States. This book does a great job of portraying the conflicts each of the characters go through. The three main conflicts are Man versus Man, Man versus himself, and Man versus society. One of the very first conflicts introduced in the book is man versus man.
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.
This last summer, i read a book called "The secret life of bees". The book took place in the year 1964 when the system of Jim crow was operating. Jim crow was a system of anti-black law where black people were considered second class citizens meaning that white people had their rights over the black people. Lily, the main character of the book lived in this period of time where racism was really common, black people din't have the same rights as white people, and they also had to struggle a lot for them to be able to vote. Also black people would use violence as their main way of solving a problem, meaning that there was always trouble, In the book Rosaleen, lily's baby sitter, happens to be offended by a group of white people in the town so
It is extremely important to have acurate facts in a historical fiction novel such as The Secret Life of Bees because it helps the reader to not only learn more about the time period, but it adds to the plausability of the story. For instance, in The Secret Life of Bees the issues of racism in the south during the 1960s are accurately shown, after Rosaleen wants tsign up to vote after learning from the TV that, “Today July second 1964,” he said, “the president of the United States signed the Civil Rights Act into law in the East Room of the White House…”(20). After reading this fact, we learn the historical setting of the novel and the racial prejudices that come with it. Rosaleen recieves hate from white men when trying to sign up to vote,