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The Secret Life Of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd

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To be accepted means "The action or process of being received as adequate or suitable, typically to be admitted into a group”(Oxford Languages). In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, acceptance is a significant theme as we see Lily change and discover herself through acceptance. The acceptance we feel determines so many aspects of our life, from our happiness to the love and the people we surround ourselves with, which is why I believe we should experience acceptance. Having acceptance can help us feel happiness. “Saw your girl in the peach stand reading up a storm. You must be proud.’ And he would half kill me.”(Kidd 15). T. Ray never accepted Lily as someone who loves to do anything for her education and this led to part of the unhappiness …show more content…

“The daughters swarmed around Our Lady like a circle of bee attendants and rubbed the honey into the wood”(Kidd 269). August describes a swarm as a queen and a group of bees that leave the hive and find a new home. The beehive symbolizes community as they all work together for one goal: honey. The community that is the Daughters have followed their queen and begun their own beehive that they are accepting people into. They swarm Our Lady as she is their queen that they have chosen to follow. Additionally, when T. Ray comes to get Lily back from the Boatwrights Sisters home, the daughters appear. “I stood in the driveway with small rocks and clumps of dirt around my feet and looked back at the porch. And there they were, too. All these mothers.They are the moons shining over me.”(Kidd 302). The mothers Lily is referring to are the daughters that wait for her return on the porch. They are her mothers and her moon, as mothers are typically loving, attentive people and the moon is all alone in the sky. They represent that Lily has a community of people that will support her and she will never be alone when she is with them as they are her community. In contrast though, when Lily explains her relationships with people she says “I wore clothes I made for myself and home economics class,... outfits only the Pentecostal girls wear. I might as well have worn a sign on my back: I'm not popular and never will be.”(Kidd 8). Lily feels

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