The Secret Life Of Bees Literary Analysis

(TS) In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens does not have an empathetic relationship with her parents as a result of the loss of her mother and an abusive father; however, Lily gains a new family figure, August Boatwright, who shows her the true empathy that is present between a parent and their child. (PS) Lily Owens’s absence of a mother and a “real” father causes Lily not to have a relationship with her parents that is filled with affection for one another. (SS) When Lily lost her mother, Deborah Fontell, she was told that she had shot and killed Deborah. (SS) Lily would say, “I would meet her saying, ‘Mother forgive. Please forgive,’” and she would kiss my skin till I grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame”

Lily shows her non-racist side in the very beginning of the book, after Rosaleen has been put in jail for spitting on a very racist white man’s shoe. She willingly sneaks into jail and attempts to free Rosaleen, but gets sent home with the racist and mean father, T. Ray. She once again tries to free Rosaleen, and this time sneaks into a hospital to free her. Lily is successful this time, and runs away with Rosaleen.

Lily starts to feel that she has developed a bond with the Boatwright sisters. Lily does not have a good relationship with her father. He makes her feel unwanted and abuses her verbally and physically. Lily’s father comes to the Boatwright’s residence and demands that Lily returns home with him but she refuses. The sisters inform the father that Lily can stay with them and they pledge to take good care of her, “ I still remember telling myself that when he drove away that day he wasn’t saying good riddance; he was saying, Oh, Lily, you’re better off in that house of coloured women. You never would have flowered with me like you will with them” (Kidd 299-300). Lily came to the realization that her father was not fit to provide her with the love and nurturing that she deserved. The sisters provided her with a loving environment where she feels protected. Also, the Boatwright sisters, especially August, are strong female role models. Lily will model her ideals, values and morals after the Boatwright

In life in general, every single human being needs a mother, even if they do not share the same skin color, circumstance, or even any biological connection. All an individual needs is an maternal touch from another. Even though Rosaleen acts as a mother when caring and raising Lily, Rosaleen’s rambunctious and somewhat crass personality prevents the motherly bond between Rosaleen and Lily. However, August Boatwright, a beekeeper from South Carolina grants Lily with the “mother’s love” that she had never received before that day. August gave Lily firm guidance when wandering through the darkness of her past, complete understanding and encouragement when faced with challenges, and criticized when needed. Early in the novel, Lily states “You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair...” (3). Yet, August presents Lily with wisdom rather than brushing Lily’s hair, teaching her about boys and dating, and so forth. “You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside” (306). For August, the typical motherly love that she exhibits is the one supplied by the Virgin Mary, the mother of God. August shows Lily the undying love that can exist everywhere but can only be made and seen by the Virgin Mary. “This is the autumn of

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.

The Secret Life of Bees is a tale in which the motherless main character, Lily, is trying to find the love that she needs and her family which she has yet to find. It is a story that explains the true meaning of what family is and the different types of love. Not only has Sue Monk Kidd successfully crafted a wondrous story with twists and turns, she has also used many different types of literary devices. Literary devices help a book seem more likable. These devices can also make a book into a page-turner.

In exactly fifty pages, Lily goes from, “My mother had left me. I hate her” (Kidd 251) to “… I have forgiven us both…” (Kidd 301). For the first thirteen of fourteen chapters, Lily hates her mother, and she makes this very clear. She directly tells August: “My mother had left me. I hate her” (Kidd 251). It’s not until August explains that Lily’s mother, Deborah, “... was practically skin and bone… And all she did was cry for a week,” that Lily starts to understand why she had to leave: she was being treated abusively by T. Ray (Kidd 252). Once Lily has this information, she begins the healing and forgiving process. This process is also helped along by Lily finally knowing the full truth about her mother’s mysterious death. The fact that Lily physically chases T. Ray as he’s about to leave the Boatwright’s house shows that she is ready to know, once and for all, the truth about her mother’s death. She is prepared for the possibility that she did in fact kill her mother. By allowing herself to know the truth, she forgives herself and her mother for leaving. She even says, “I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again” (Kidd 301). Progress in the process of Lily forgiving herself and her mom is clearly shown. Overall, she has condoned the actions of her mother, but still has little “flashbacks” or moments of weakness where she has to forgive

Since her mother died she has had to put up with her abusive father who doesn't really care about Lily. Having to not only deal with this but the fact that she doesn't have any friends in school doesn't really help. “People who think dying is the worst thing don’t know a thing about life.” Lily says this in the beginning of the novel. This is an important quote showing Lily’s bravery because Lily’s life has been profoundly affected by her mother’s death. This statement suggests that living with someone else’s death can be more painful than dying. She grew up without a mother and the taunting guiltiness that she killed her own mother. In some ways I share this quality with Lily. At times I can be a brave person but like everybody else I'm not always so brave. One time when I was brave was when I was first coming into the high school. I was always so nervous at just the thought of high school so when the big day came I was very anxious. I was brave enough to get through it all and now I'm more comfortable in the

Overall, it seems Lily spends her life in a constant state of regret, indecisiveness, contradictions, and conflict. All of this considered, one could interpret that Lily is paving her own path to destruction; however, the beginning of this path was entirely chance. Surely the death of her parents was a completely unrelated tragic accident, and as a human character she had no control over the other characters’ reactions to her. However, one can argue that her behavior

“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

Lily feels alone in this world. She is ostracized at school, treated with an absence of love and lives day to day knowing that she has committed irreversible acts. When she thinks about her mother all of these complications melt away in the warm allure she feels.

According to Lily “People who think dying is the worst thing don’t know anything about life.” (2) The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd is a coming-of-age written novel. Sue Monk Kidd also wrote other books such as, the Mermaid Chair, and the Invention of wings. This novel took place in 1964, in South Carolina in two towns called, Sylvan and Tiburon, during the civil rights movement. The protagonist and narrator of this novel is Lily Owens, she is 14 and is rejected by her parents. T. Ray Owens (lily’s father) is the antagonist, which is cruel. In this novel there is cruelty that you will see throughout the novel and parts of the novel you will experience a show of hope.

She is entrapped with the ideas floating in her mind as one can see here. “That night I lay in bed… for the first ten thousand years”. She also has an abusive dad who is taking all of his anger out on his daughter which consisted of beating and kicking her as punishment. She is so fed up with this action, She decides to do something about it. This leads to the second force or burden that she deals with, Lily leaving her abusive dad at such a young age. She constantly mentions that she wants to leave but her dad is resilient to her not leaving.“Heavens to betsy, what's all this talk about you leaving? Nobody wants you to leave, Lily, till your good and ready”. Once she is fed up, Lily runs away with her nanny Rosaleen behind her dad's back. The Boatrights were bee farmers who were very comforting and nice when taking them in. While she is running away from her dad, the real reason she is leaving is to find answers about what happened that night with her mother. Her father eventually finds where she is and tracks her down and beats her. While she is receiving a beating her father tells her that she was the one that killed her mother, but the shooting was on accident. Her father at that time realizes that he was taking his anger out on her for no reason and that she is still her daughter and didn’t deserve it. One big thing holding her back it the racism that she encounters

August: I believe that Lily learned that sometimes you have to forgive things in life to get past hard times. She couldn’t forgive herself enough for killing her mother, and that is why she ran away. She needed to know the truth. Once she forgave herself, her whole life had changed.

As the story went on, my impressions of lily completely changed. I felt bad for her at first. Then I went to liking her kind of as the underdog in the story. Then I started believing that she was greedy. Then I went back to feeling bad. So my emotions toward her were on a roller coaster as the story progressed. So let’s start at the beginning. She was raised by a single father (T-Ray) because her mom was killed. T-Ray forced was just not a great father at all. The punishment when she disobeyed was kneeling on grits for a long time. They would mess up her knees and make it hard to walk. She was forced to sell T-Ray’s peaches because he owned a peach farm. Along with that, he would just mentally abuse lily and she had to deal with that for all of her childhood.