Raising Lily 's Biological Father Essay

Ray was Lily’s abusive father that does not care about Lily’s clothing, sleepovers, or even football games (8). (SS) When Lily calls T. Ray and he cannot answer a simple question about her, she tries to convince herself that it does not matter by telling herself, “Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry. So what if he doesn’t know the color you love best? So what?” (160). (SS) Lily has the idea that she is “unlovable” and wonders “who could love her” (242). (SS) But little does Lily know that a very significant figure will come into her life and will show Lily what being loved by a “family” member feels like. (PS) August Boatwright, an African American beekeeper, shows Lily her empathetic heart right when Lily walks through her door. (SS) When Lily comes to the Boatwright household seeking for a place to stay, August opens up her home to Lily, exclaiming, “Well, you can stay here till you figure out what to do. We can’t have you living on the side of the road” (72). (SS) August could have turned Lily away and told her to find another place to stay, but she graciously opens up her home to Lily. (SS) In the same way, when Lily faints of embarrassment during a Daughters of Mary gathering, August acts as if it is her fault by telling Lily, “I should’ve turned on the fans in

Lily starts off stuck living in an unloving, abusive household and decides to free herself from the negative atmosphere that she had been living in her whole life. Lily is perpetually abused by her father. He forces her to kneel on Martha White's, gets exasperated every time she speaks, and yells at her for no reason. Lily is not the only one noticing the terrible treatment, Rosaleen does too. Once after Lily had to kneel on the Martha White's Rosaleen said to her, “Look at you, child. Look what he’s done to you” (Kidd 25). Noticing the unloving treatment Lily gets, Rosaleen knew that their household was demoralizing place for Lily to be in, which is why she didn’t question when Lily when she later runs away. Lily one day realizes she needs to do something about her horrible life at home. While sitting in her room she hears a voice in her

T.Ray is shown for once caring about somebody other than his dog and this is also a realization to the main character. Kidd chooses very specific words in this passage such as awe and quivered to describe his body language very specifically creating a vivid image of what he looks like after this thought and shows that he has changed from his malevolent temper to a melancholy state where he reflects on everything he knows. Kidd explicitly states this through Lily by saying, “He looked away, toward the window, like he was contemplating the road that led her here,” (Kidd 295) On it's surface this is referring to Lily and how she got to where he is, however, this also is referring to Deborah, T.Ray’s deceased wife, and how she got there when she ran away from them. T.Ray still feels a powerful burning pain in his heart from this abandonment.

T. Ray breaks the news that Lily’s mom had left Lily with him and had come back to pack up her stuff when the big argument between he and Lily’s mom happened. At that point, Lily has enough of T. Ray, so she starts to have a mini-mental breakdown. Amidst the chaos going on inside her mind, she hears a voice say, “Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open” (41). That little voice means all the difference in the world to Lily. To Lily, it is as if her mother is saying to leave T. Ray and start a new life. Right then she knows that she has to

It’s presumed that this is what T.Ray thinks when Lily says "After my morning. Of capturing bees, I spent the afternoon in the peach stand out on the highway, selling T.Ray's peaches" (Kidd 15). At this point in the novel, T.Ray made Lily work on the highway to sell his peaches for him. He thought that Lily was to do anything he wanted her to do. Yes, Lily is his daughter, but the year this book was based on was 1964, after the child labor law has been passed. Lily should not have had to work for T.Ray because he forced her to. After Lily ran away from T.Ray, she called him to apologize. T.Ray started to yell at her for that. It is evident that he was angry at her for leaving him alone when he said "'I'll tell you what you were. You were a goddamn fool who went looking for trouble and found it. Because of you I can't walk down the street in Sylvan without people staring at me. I've had to stop everything and search for you all over

When Lily and Rosaleen join August Boatwright’s house, August is warm and welcoming, and Lily can breathe a

In addition, after Lily’s liberation from T. Ray, another character pushed Lily to make a choice without even saying a word to her and that character was Lily’s mother, Deborah, who was dead and yet she still guided Lily to her next destination. Deborah’s largest contribution to Lily’s life was leaving behind a trail of love for Lily to follow, giving Lily someplace to go when she had no home. Lily immediately knows where to go after leaving her father's trammel, for she finds a picture of Deborah in Tiburon, South Carolina. Lily’s eagerness to learn more about her mother urges her to travel to Tiburon. Lily reveals her desperation on finding out more about her mother’s love towards her when she said, “ Well, think about it. She must have been there some time in her life to have owned this picture. And if she was, a person might remember her, you never know” (Kidd 51). Lily’s voice held a sense of hope as she believed that there was something in

Along with this, while staying with the Boatwrights Lily learned many new things, from learning to be more introspective from August, to learning to be more hardworking from the bees. Finally, by the time Lily had learned the truth about her mother abandoning her, she is strong enough to understand that it was not her fault. She is mature enough to handle her feelings of guilt, anger, and confusion, and is mature enough to love her

It doesn’t take us the readers long to find out that T. Ray is an abusive parent, but it does take us a little longer to discover why he is the way he his. Going in chronological order of the discoveries within the book, T. Ray’s main three sources of internal conflict which produces external conflict with his daughter is the result of his background of war, his wife running away and eventually dying, and his daughter running away as well. Working backwards, August’s introduction into the book and the knowledge she has on Lily’s family divulges quite a lot about T. Ray than Lily is aware of. As we the readers find out, T. Ray served as a combatant during the Vietnam War and returned to Tiburon in 1964, the year the book is set in. Drawing on contemporary knowledge, the Vietnam War was a highly controversial and overall bloody war that caused massive civil unrest. These facts mixed with whatever traumatic experiences that T. Ray endured during the war serves as the first source of

Lily's attitude begins to change as she becomes accustomed to the Boatwright sisters. She sees them as strong black females, living in a versatile community. When the Boatwright sisters teach her beekeeping, she sees similarities in the bee hive community, to the community the Boatwright sisters live in.The bees contribute in the teachings of life and death to

Rosaleen was Lily’s maid while she was living with her father, T-Ray. Lily runs away from home with Rosaleen. At first Rosaleen doesn’t know where they are going and eventually Lily tells her. This quote is said by Rosaleen when she finds out what is really going on. “I get it. You ran off ‘cause of what your daddy said about your mother. It didn’t have nothing to do with me in jail”(Kidd 53). This quote is significant because it makes Rosaleen think that Lily doesn’t really care about her. Eventually August and Lily talk about Lily’s mother. Rosaleen and August knew about Lily’s mother. This quote is said by Lily while she was getting comforted by Rosaleen. “I wish you’d told me what you knew about my mother”(Kidd 264). This quote is significant because Lily realizes all the secrets that were hidden from her. Rosaleen taught Lily that the truth isn’t always great through keeping secrets from

Luckily for Lily, she comes upon the Boatwright sisters once she reaches Tiburon. Because of the fact Lily does not have anyone to share her love with, she is compelled to stay and live with the Boatwrights. At one point in the novel, Lily and August are having a conversation when August asks Lily “What else do you love Lily?”(Kidd 39). Lily then thinks to herself, “No one had ever asked me that before. What did I love? Right off the bat I wanted to say that I loved the picture of my mother…but I had to swallow that back”(39). Lily does not feel comfortable enough yet that she says, “ I love writing poems, just give me something to write, and I’ll love it” despite the fact that Lily really loves August (39). She loves August so much that she would rather stay in Tiburon with the Boatwrights than be with her own father T. Ray. The loss of Deborah results in Lily going to obtain love somewhere other than her own home. This is also why Lily takes Rosaleen with her. Rosaleen is a black nanny who used to work on T. Ray’s farm. She has been there for Lily in the past but she cannot always be there one hundred percent because of her race. Due to Deborah’s death, Lily does not have a mother figure, however, he journey to Tiburon with Rosaleen proves to be a success as she finds the Boatwrights and strengthens her relationship with her nanny, Rosaleen.

Lily comes to know three incredible women called the Boatwrights. Their names are August, June, and May. Lily became closest to August although she was close to May and June, also. Lily felt as though August had a comforting and consoling way about her. August once told Lily “Actually, you can be bad at something...but if you love doing it, that will be enough.” (Kidd 111). Her motivational life advice helped to guide Lily. Furthermore, August had to be the one to tell Lily that they had lost May; May had killed herself. Lily did not take the news so well. Lily claimed she had started to “shiver…[she] could feel the teeth in [her] mout, crashing against each other.” (Kidd 193).

Throughout the novel, Lily is able to depend only on herself and her own strength to get through tough times. When she was only eight years old, her family was hit by a flash flood that threatened their home. Her father

Her father is described as a neutral figure and her memory of him is hazy at best. This lack of a father figure led to Lily’s attitude towards men. Because of this Lily always denies herself suitable marriages because she always feels she can do better. Lily is conflicted between the man she loves and the man with money. She loves Seldon but she deems him too poor for her perfect marriage. After much thought, Lily decides to marry Peter Gryce who is exceedingly wealthy but is too late as he is already engaged at the time of her decision. Lily cannot decide between love and money both of which are important aspects of her life. She is unwilling to compromise between the two which eventually leads to her downfall. Lily needs to marry a man with wealth and a stable status in high New York society because she needs a source of income to supplement her own unstable wealth.