Little Bee By Chris Cleave

The novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, and the film, My Girl, share common themes. One of the common themes is coming-of-age. This means growing up and maturing through experiences and lessons learned. The main characters in the novel, and the film learn more as they grow up, and they learn from their consequences. Lily Owens, from the novel, and Vada Sultenfuss, from the movie, are very similar characters, and learn many of the same lessons.

Sue Monk Kidd uses allusion and personification in her book The Secret Life of Bees to help create an image for the setting of the book.

Every family has parents and maybe some siblings too, it is what makes the family a family. Some kids are adopted and some are not and some like Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees got to choose her family. In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the theme that appears a lot is how much family means, even if it is chosen.

The Secret Side of T.Ray Every monster is just a man at his core. In “The Secret Life of Bees”, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and written by Sue Monk Kidd, a teenage girl, Lily, runs away from her abusive father to the Boatwrights house in Tiburon, SC. The father, T.Ray, is described as a monster and unloving man. T.Ray searches for Lily for half of the summer and eventually shows up at the door of the Boatwrights.

Imagine a play cast. Include everyone, the crew and actors. A feeling of unity pulses through the air right before the show begins. There is a sense of harmony and solidarity. This community is a feeling Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd never knows until she is 14. The Secret Life of Bees takes place in the 1960’s in Virginia. It focuses on Lily, a young girl with dreams of finding out about her dead mother. Eventually, she runs away from her abusive father T. Ray. Her heart takes her to the Boatwright sisters, three African-American women who take her in. There Lily learns about the abilities of a group of women and their healing power. That nurturing force is symbolized by the Black

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

In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, a fourteen-year-old girl Lily Owens along with her black housekeeper Rosaleen, escape to a town in South Carolina called Tiburon after Rosaleen got thrown into prison after insulting a group of racists. There, they meet a trio of black beekeeping sisters who take them in and teach Lily about beekeeping. Through these experiences, Lily has discovered many things. But these could not be shown to her without three influentials in her life. The three characters are Deborah Fontanel, Lily’s mother, The Black Mary Statue, a statue that symbolizes strength, and guidance for blacks and August Boatwright, a middle aged black beekeeper who comforts and guides Lily.

“But I had such a moment in my own ordinary room. I heard a voice say Lily Melissa Owens your jar is open” (Kidd 41). The bees acted almost as a guide to Lily, when the bees left Lily knew that it was her time to go as well. The bees, messengers from God were signaling Lily that she needed to remove herself from her current situation. “I knew exactly what I had to do -- leave. I had to get away from T. Ray” (Kidd 41). The bees were the reason that this realization occurred to Lily. The bees were telling Lily that God wanted her to leave, it was God’s plan for Lily to live with the calendar sisters so she could learn about her mother. Which is what she needed the most. The bees put Lily on the right track by leading her to her

Finally, Lily had built up the courage to leave when she heard a voice declare to her: “Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open” (41). while she was looking at her jar with a bee imprisoned inside it. When Lily’s “jar” opened, she was able to escape her life with T. Ray and receive the freedom she’s desired, similar to how the bee would escape when its’ “jar is open”. Lily had matured because she was doing what she desired. Being free, Lily shed T. Ray’s imprisonment.

Sue Monk Kidd’s novel “The Secret Life of Bees” sympathized the reader with the use of plot actions, symbolism, metaphors and dialogue that exhibited the only reason behind Deborah’s and Ray’s actions was love and self-protection. The symbolism behind the whale pin and its usage to sympathize Ray’s actions, Deborah’s depression story and repercussion, and Deborah’s reasons to marry Terrence have a compassionate effect on Deborah’s death and Terrence’s suffering.

In “The Secret Life of Bees,” the bees were shown as symbolism of the changes in Lily’s life, and they made an appearance several times as she changed throughout the book. “The sound swelled in the dark till the entire room was pulsating till the air itself became alive and matted with bees” (Kidd 4). Even towards the beginning of the novel, Lily starts to notice the bees around her as they symbolize ‘the birth of the new Lily.’ The nature made a difference in Lily’s opinions towards life in general, she even stated how she’s like to lay with the moonlight on her chest. “The bee landed on the state map I kept tacked on the wall. I watched it walk along the coast of South Carolina on scenic highway 17” (Kidd 10). The bee represented the trip Lily and Rosaleen took when they made their way down to Tiburon, South Carolina. Lily was a big fan of nature; wind, moonlight and animals and acted very connected to it. Kidd’s attitude towards Lily’s goals were that they were bold but possible and

The doors are symbolic of imagination, and he is saying to unlock one's imagination. This

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

We also see walls/doors as a symbol that is ensuring the isolation of the characters. Each character will be analyzed through the text first, and then I will analyze using other critics’ perspective on the issue.

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