Lily Owens: The Wonders Of Bee Invasions

Rosaleen’s Character in The Secret Life of Bees There are many important characters in The Secret Life of Bees that help Lily on her journey to find out about her mother. “Side characters” such as Zach, August, May, June, and Rosaleen, all help Lily to grow and change and to learn more about her past and her mother's past. Rosaleen is an important character in the story, she acts in as Lily’s stand-in mother before she runs away with Rosaleen to Tiburon. At Tiburon she stays with Lily in the honey house for most of the time while they try to survive together, and after a while Rosaleen is show to be less of a mother and more of a friend to Lily, sticking by her side through thick and thin. Rosaleen is mainly important because of the lessons she taught Lily about racism in the real world and dealing with problems.

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.

Volk is a writer for Discover magazine and he follows around Darren Cox who is a 50 year old beekeeper who tries to make a change. The biggest question they are trying to answer is what is killing the bees, and how can it be stopped? Cox’s bees do not produce the amount of honey they used to and he would like to see an answer. Another point they consider is that the bees are not only dying, but they are weakening. He believes that the quality of work that bees put out is diminishing, which is then leading to the decrease in the quality of the honey in recent years. Volk’s article helps display how losing bees will impact us significantly. As far as solving the bee problem it is not what I was looking for but, I will use it as an example of what needs to change.

“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.

“‘People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different’” (Kidd 293). This quote from August Boatwright perfectly encompasses what happens to Lily during The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. All throughout the novel, the increased maturity of Lily’s character is very noticeable. At the beginning of the book, Lily, a 14-year-old white girl who is living in the South in the 1960’s, accepts segregation without questioning it. By the end, her perspective on life and others changes to reflect a more sophisticated woman. Through characterization, Lily matures as a person because she learns how to face conflicts as an adult and treat people in a grown-up way.

If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.

The devastating tragedy of losing a person's mother at an early age can drastically affect that person's life. It can impact the way someone thinks, corresponds with others, and the way someone handles themselves emotionally. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees Lily Owens loses her mother at the early age of four. During Lily's journey she finds comfort and support in the women that she meets. Throughout the novel Lily goes through many changes because of the impact of the motherly figures of the Black Mary, Rosaleen, and the Calendar Sisters.

Lily, a fourteen-year-old white girl, lives alone with her father, a peach farmer, in Sylvan, South Carolina. As the novel opens, she lies in bed, waiting for the bees that live in the walls of her bedroom to emerge and fly around, as they do most nights. T. Ray, her father, is abusive and does not believe her story about the bees. Her nanny and housekeeper, Rosaleen, believes Lily but also thinks Lily is foolish for trying to collect the bees in a jar. Lily recalls her very last memory of her mother, Deborah, who died when Lily was a small child. Lily thinks that she played a horrible part in Deborah’s death. In a flashback, readers learn that T. Ray told Lily that she accidentally shot Deborah while Deborah and T. Ray were fighting one day.

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

“Look at me. I dive into one absurd thing after another, and here I am in the pink house.” (431). These are the words of Lily Owens in the novel The Secret Life of Bees which was written by Sue Monk Kidd. The story is about a fourteen-year-old girl named Lily who lives on a peach farm in South Carolina with her abusive father, T.Ray. Throughout the novel, Lily had shaped her life around her mother’s death. Searching for answers about her mother, Lily, and her mother-like figure Rosaleen escaped to Tiburon, South Carolina to find the Boatwright sisters. During this journey, Lily and Rosaleen develop deep relationships with the sisters. Staying with the sisters, Lily finds her answers about her mother. Whilst in search for knowledge about her mother, Lily unexpectedly finds a new place she can really

One day, Lily and her younger sister Milly went to the carnival and on the way they passed by the zoo. This reminded Lily about how much Milly loved penguins.

This concept leads Lily to believe that the Virgin Mary is in many ways her mother, even though she is a mother to thousands of other people as well (Emanuel 41). Lily receives support and love from August and the community like the bees, though it is a secret to the rest of the world. The bees act as pathfinders for Lily as she learns more about herself, along with Zach

Lily Owens is a fourteen year old girl who does not have any friends in the beginning of the novel, and she is never accepted at school.

Invasive species have a variety of impacts, many of which are unpredictable. The Africanized honey bee (also known as the “killer bee” in the media community or apis mellifera scutellata among scientists) provides an excellent case study of how even an intentionally introduced invasive species can become uncontrollable and problematic.

Where did all the honey bees go? Honey Bees pollinate crops, and fruits and vegetables. Crops feed livestock, Humans eat both fruits and vegetables and livestock. Therefore humans along with all other living things need honey bees. But where have they all gone? Nationally honeybees are disappearing all over the United States for many reasons such as pesticides, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and other issues still being investigated but here in the Chicagoland area the colonies are dying off due to the freezing weather. “Head beekeeper for the Morton Arboretum and the rooftop hives at the Chicago Marriott, he doesn’t want a repeat of last winter’s massacre, when 80 percent of his colonies perished” (Lauren Williamson). Bee keepers here in