Internal Conflict In Little Bee By Chris Cleave

(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”

Conflict is a key aspect in all pieces of literature. Without it, works would be very boring, predictable and would not be able to draw the reader in. There is usually one main conflict the protagonist faces, whether it is against an evil villain or the evil inside their own self. In the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the courageous protagonist, Lily, struggles with an internal conflict with the guilt of possibly being the cause of her mother's death and the absence of knowledge about her mother. Following a clue left by her mother, Lily runs away from home and meets the "calendar sisters" in Tiburon, SC. There, she is finally able to discover who her mother actually was and learn the truth behind her mother's death: that Lily had accidentally shot her. Upon uncovering the whole truth, Lily is finally able to begin to forgive herself and shrug off the heavy guilt that had burdened her for years. Through Lily's struggle to figure out who her mother was and accept what happened to her, Sue Monk Kidd wishes to communicate that even if something

“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.

Most people cannot see reality as it truly is from their eyes. In Athol Fugard’s Master Harold… and the Boys, he shows the apartheid between blacks and whites in South Africa. While some of these white people wanted to end apartheid, other people who lived with apartheid for their whole lives do not see the wrongs with it. These people want change, but do not know that they are the issue which is known as a psychological barrier. In the play, Athol Fugard uses Willie who struggles with a psychological barrier, how Wille’s psychological barrier motivates his actions and how Willie’s barrier is altered by the end of the play to prove how Willie is affected negatively by apartheid.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said “A woman is like a teabag, you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” Eleanor’s meaning behind these words was that a woman is much more than you expect her to be. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character, Lily, meets three African-American sisters who go through difficult situations throughout the book. After meeting the sisters, Lily begins to understand the importance of women in society. A woman figure in your life can help you with your problems. They tend to heal a broken person with their mother-like qualities. Some people don't see how significant women are to humankind.

In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he shares his story of his experience through World War Two. Through his experiences, he experiences both internal and external conflicts. The conflicts he experienced include ideas of dehumanization, loss, and physical changes.

In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, a young girl named Lily struggles with growing up with only a harsh father and a housemaid while trying to find her own place in the world. At the age of four, Lily accidentally shoots her mother while trying to help her in a fight against Lily’s dad. Ever since that day, Lily has a difficult time trying to be a lady and trying to cope with her somewhat abusive father. One day, when Lily is fourteen, the housemaid Rosaleen is sent to jail for pouring dip spit on white men’s shoes but later gets assaulted by the men and is taken to the hospital where Lily goes to sneak her out. In order to help incorporate the story’s title into the story, the author has written epigraphs, that are about bees, for every chapter in the book. Chapter two’s epigraph says “ On leaving the old nest, the swarm normally flies only a few metres and settles. Scout bees look for a suitable place to start the new colony. Eventually, one location wins favor and the whole swarm takes to the air”(34). This epigraph parallels the story because of the similarities in how bees move on and look for somewhere to start their new lives and how Lily and Rosaleen try to start their new

The greatest potential influence and need in a child’s life is a mother, someone who will put their happiness and needs after their child’s. The major theme in Sue Monk Kidd’s, The Secret Life of Bee’s, is the importance of motherhood in a child’s life, displayed through Lily’s constant search for a mother figure. Lily starts off looking to Rosaleen as a guide in her life, she then finds a mother figure in the Black Mary after learning about her story, and in the end, accepts August and the other sisters of Mary as her surrogate mothers. In the Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd excellently displays the theme of motherhood and its necessity.

In the short story "Traplines" the writer, Eden Robinson, shows the internal conflict the main character, Will, has trouble in finding his true identity by showing his relationships with the Smythe's, his family, and his friends.

In the novel The Secret Life of Bees (2001), Sue Kidd creates a character, Terrence Ray Owens, that serves as the epitome of internal conflict. Kidd is able to show Terrence’s internal conflict through through a flashback from Lily’s friend August, and a series of violent actions inflicted on his daughter Lily. Kidd’s purpose in this novel is to display the ramifications of a broken home dynamic, in order to show how forgiveness to oneself and others is truly the first step to finding happiness.

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.

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

               Jack Nicholson as Randall McMurphy: What do you think                you are, for Chrissake, crazy or something'? Well you're not!                You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out                walking' around on the streets and that's it.

In Chris Cleave’s Little Bee and Incendiary, the characters Little Bee and the unnamed narrator respectively, undergo a traumatic experience in the early stages of the books. Little Bee is confined in an immigration detention center upon her arrival in England for not having legal documents to prove her age. Meanwhile, the unnamed narrator has her life blown apart by a terrorist attack that kills her husband and four year old son. Both characters lose the hope and faith in their world and adjust to their new lives accordingly. Little Bee disguises herself physically, verbally, and legally in order to stay safe from the dangers of her new life. The narrator combats her emotional breakdown by helping to investigate the instigator behind the

Little Bee, by Chris Cleve, is a novel that explores unthinkable evil, but simultaneously celebrates its characters in their ability to transcend all that weighs them down, including their pasts, their secrets, and their flaws. For the character of Little Bee, identity is inescapably tied to ethnicity, nationality, gender, race, and class. A representative passage of the book that explores Little Bee’s point of view (both its unceasing optimism and stark realism) occurs in the final chapter: Little Bee is awoken from a good dream, and then comes the ominous first sentence, “There is a moment when you wake up from dreaming in the hot sun, a moment outside time when you do not know what you are” (Cleave 258). Little Bee is questioning her