The Irrationality Of Racism In The Secret Life Of Bees

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.

Racism is a big part of this book. It shows the absurdity of what people thought back then, which is an important lesson. It is important for us to learn what people’s views used to be, and how important it is not to go back to that mindset.

In the book, The Secret Life of Bees it brings up the issues of racism, acceptance of people for who they are and the importance of love, through how the book is written. There was lots of information about bee life that tied in as a metaphor to what the characters were experiencing. But in the movie the bees were not metaphorical and more informational. Furthermore, In the movie Zach ends up beaten up by white men for sneaking Lily, a white girl, into the colored section of a movie theater. This placed the blame on Lily and Zach for what came next (May's death). It was much better for the story for Zach to end up in jail, suspected of assaulting a white man even though he had done nothing wrong. It showed how bad the racial tensions were of the time period and how people tend to judge people based on the color of their skin. Additionally the character choice for Zach, Tristan Wilds, was supposed to be playing a 16 year old boy but, looked much older since he was 19. He looked very awkward paired with Lily since she was only 14.

The worst thing about being lied to is knowing the you weren't worth the truth. In the novel the Secret life of Bees the author Sue Monk Kidd talks about Lily Owens a fourteen year old white girl lives on a peach farm with his abusive father T-Ray and his housekeeper Rosaleen . She believes she shot and kill her mom Deborah when she was four years old . In this novel the theme of lies /deceit is developed through certain characters and their motives for deception.

During the 1960’s Sue Monk Kidd depicts a social climate dominated by racism and racial discrimination. The novel, Secret Life of the Bees by Sue Monk Kidd depicts a society plagued by racial stereotypes and injustice in the 1960’s through the view of Lily; A 14 year old runaway growing up in the highly racist south. Throughout the Secret Life of the Bees, Kidd expresses racial inequality in the south during the sixties; Whether it is depicted through Lily’s changing perception of race, The acceptance of interracial relationships, or the task of challenging and overcoming racial stereotypes. Lily, a 14 year old girl, (1) has a constantly changing perception of race throughout the novel.

In the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens discovers the deeper meaning of home, family, love, and choosing what matters, through a long journey of lies and hope. After experiencing cruelties, prejudice, and escaping from the authorities, Lily set out on an adventure to find out the truth of what happened to her mother.

Martin Luther King once said “segregation not only harms one physically, but injures one spiritually it scars the sole it is a system for whatever stares the segregated in the face saying you are less then you are not equal to.” Jim Crow was a law discriminating all, except the whites. Even a decade later the Jim Crow laws are still affected.

The Secret Life of Bees includes many issues that were going on during the 1960’s. Some issues stated were more sought after than others depending where in the country one was located. In the book, Lily lives in the heart of the south, South Carolina, which makes it easy to point out specific, debatable topics. With this, The Secret Life of Bees portrays many of the movements and issues prevalent in the 1960s like Gender Issues, the Women’s Rights Movement, and the Civil Rights movement.

The secret of bees, my opinions were questioned more than once. Several of the statements I completely agreed with, while others I disagreed strongly.

In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the symbolism of the color blue as Lily uses her favorite color to judge whether a person truly loves her. Lily believes that for someone to truly love her, they must know the most trivial detail of her: the color blue. For example, Lily, in an argument with her father, blatantly asks her father if he knows her favorite color. Although one would expect a father to know such fact, Terrence, her father, does not know Lily’s favorite color and questions why this has such importance. The color blue represents a fatherly and motherly love that Lily obviously lacks; due to her lack of love, Lily decides to run away and to find a new roof. Furthermore, Lily escapes to Tiburon, a place her deceased

From the beginning, the reader can clearly distinguish the main theme of racism in The Secret Life of Bees. Kidd first introduces racism in Chapter One when three white men insult Rosaleen on her way to town to register to vote. Lily describes the attack that follows narrating, “They lunged at her... Rosaleen lay sprawled on the ground, pinned, twisting her fingers around clumps of grass. Blood ran from a cut beneath her eye,” (33).

In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the protagonist, Lily Owens finds that her past chases her into the present. Lily lives with her abusive father, T. Ray and her colored housekeeper, Rosaleen. After Lily reaches the last straw with T. Ray, she sets out to find out about her mother, who was accidentally killed by Lily herself at a very young age. The Secret Life of Bees captures Lily Owens in her most vulnerable state where she’s taught she’s not capable of anything, yet battles racism and her father’s abuse by changing her attitude, having moments of realization, and experiencing multiple recurring events

During the summer I was assigned a summer reading, “The Secret Life of Bees”. The book is based in the 1960’s in South Carolina when the Civil Rights Act was signed by president Lyndon Johnson, and by that you’d know there was a lot of discrimination.

In life, racism and discrimination have played a part in many people's lives. Even though there has been countless attempts to try to fix the problem, people were and still are affected by it. This theme of racism and discrimination can be found in plenty of works of literature, where the authors uses this one theme to develop their story. Some types are in fictional stories like Of Mice and Men, memoirs like “Night” and plays like “Fences”.

Today I will be discussing a about Jim Crow and the Secret Life of Bees. Jim Crow was the name of a racial caste system which happened between 1887 and the mid 1960’s. Jim Crow had many unfair laws that separated whites and blacks and these laws didn’t not let whites and blacks drink from the same water fountains, go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, etc. Whites mistreated black people because they taught they were cursed servants and white people were the superior race. In the novel of The Secret Life of Bees, the author puts the setting and place in the 1960’s in Sylvan, South Carolina and Tiburon, South Carolina were the Civil Rights Act had been recently signed by President Johnson. Lily who is a white fourteen years old