Identity is defined as, “the qualities, beliefs, etc., that distinguish or identify a person or thing”(dictionary.com). Every single person has one aspect of themselves that is different from everybody else; their identity. It is especially unique to their personal qualities and beliefs, yet can be influenced by others, or even a community. A community heavily influences the beliefs of everyone inside it, due to its display of propaganda, oppression, and inequality between its people. Suzanne Collins displays propaganda from the oppressive rule of the Capitol to the oppressed citizens in her novel, The Hunger Games. In The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd displays how a community can change a person’s beliefs, therefore changing their …show more content…
Therefore, the identity placed upon them is poverty-stricken coal miners who are oppressed by the Capitol, and don’t have a say in their culture or sense of living. Due to their lack of income, each person has to fight for food, water, and even clothing: Katniss says that, “On the way home, we swing by the Hob, the black market—we easily trade six of the fish for good bread, the other two for salt”(Collins 11). Most citizens come to this “Hob” in order to survive. They trade in goods or food that they produce, and in return they can get clothing, food such as bread, and even household items. Citizens are deprived of goods like cooked birds, fresh produce, and leather furniture; instead they find themselves constantly bartering for goods that they need to survive. The lack of development inside this community has influenced the people within it, causing them to shape their identity and their way of life around it. In The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens is the main character who is shown in two different types of communities within the novel. The first is with her father T. Ray, and an African-American woman named Rosaleen in “Peach Country.” T. Ray lost his wife due to a horrific gun accident and has since become abusive and cruel towards Lily. Lily says, “I’d been kneeling on grits since I was six, but still I never got used to that powdered-glass feeling beneath my skin”(Kidd 24). Lily grew accustomed
The Secret Life of Bees, written by Sue Monk Kidd, is a bildungsroman novel about an adolescent girl and her maturation throughout her fourteenth summer. The novel takes place in the 1960s while the Civil Rights Act is still fairly new to people. Throughout the novel, protagonist Lily Owens struggles as she tries to find her way through obstacles thrown at her. As Lily experiences different events, good and bad, she matures and grows as an individual. Having grown up around a black woman in this time period, Lily had no bias toward one race or the other. But also having grown up in a primarily white town, she never saw the other side of the bias. As the story progresses, Lily learns that people will have biases against her, which is something
Identity is the set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group. Each people have their own personality, being different and unique from other people. Even though it’s different, each people have some similarity with others that connected them together as a community or a group. However, these groups is not open for all people, some people have to sacrifice their aspects of identity in order to belong to the group that they want to join.
First of all, The Secret Life of Bees is a 1960’s novel based on a child named Lily, who was bossed around and treated unfairly by her dad T-Ray, which he himself had a black maid named Rosaleen working for him since before Lily was born. Lily and Rosaleen had a very special relationship that had loyalty, trust,
Lily, a fourteen-year-old white girl, lives alone with her father, a peach farmer, in Sylvan, South Carolina. As the novel opens, she lies in bed, waiting for the bees that live in the walls of her bedroom to emerge and fly around, as they do most nights. T. Ray, her father, is abusive and does not believe her story about the bees. Her nanny and housekeeper, Rosaleen, believes Lily but also thinks Lily is foolish for trying to collect the bees in a jar. Lily recalls her very last memory of her mother, Deborah, who died when Lily was a small child. Lily thinks that she played a horrible part in Deborah’s death. In a flashback, readers learn that T. Ray told Lily that she accidentally shot Deborah while Deborah and T. Ray were fighting one day.
Haunted by the her own memories, Lily Owens finds comfort in the humming of the bees. In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd writes about the life of young girl whose spontaneous decisions lead her to her mother’s past. Lily’s life has revolved around the lack of a mother. Her father, T. Ray, is a harsh and unloving peach farmer who punishes Lily unreasonably and does not fulfil his father like position. Lily’s adventure begins after catching a few bees in a jar. She empathizes with them as they are stuck and alone, something she understands all too well. On the day of her birthday, Lily and her negro nanny, Rosaleen, go out into town to register for voting. Rosaleen and Lily are on their way when a group of white men begin to harass Rosaleen and degrade her for being a negro. Rosaleen pours her spit jug on the shoes of the man and is given no mercy when she is beaten. With Rosaleen ending up in jail, Lily returns to the comfort of the bees once again. As she opens the jar and watches the bees escape, Lily follows suit and flees from home. She breaks Rosaleen out of the hospital and they hitchhike their way to Tiburon, South Carolina. Lily believes that her mother, Deborah, had once visited Tiburon and where she had obtained a picture of a Black Madonna. Lily has spent her whole life looking for new information and connections between herself and her mother. With luck and fate on her side, Lily finds the home of the Boatwright sisters, the creators of the Black
The Secret Life of Bees is a novel written by Sue Monk Kidd. It is about a girl, named Lily, who goes to another town to seek answers about her mother. In the novel Lily starts maturing throughout the course of months. Lily has many mother figures who teach her different lessons. August teaches Lily that race doesn’t matter, June teaches Lily about love, and Rosaleen teaches Lily that the truth isn’t always good.
This quote is showing the power the Capitol has and whatever they do no matter how bad it is there is nothing you can do and even if you do you will pay a severe consequence. In the hunger games they were able to prove there power by destroying district 13 so that they can intimidate the other 12 capitols so if they make any threats to the Capitol they will pay the price each district left is being forced to fight in the hunger games and as much as this anger each person of each district there is nothing to do but either cooperate in the hunger games while killing innocent people or suffer in misery while having to watch them die or if not involved in the hunger games having to live a life of unhappiness and pain just managing to live day by
What is identity? A normal person would think that it’s simply defined as who we are. However, there are many definitions of identity, as it can mean differently for others. Identity is what makes us unique from one another because there is no one else like us. Since our surroundings, such as the people we meet and places we go to, possess a role into shaping who we are, we are constantly changing. As we grow up and become curious, we experiences many things and start to see different sides of ourselves. We start to question our individuality, to the point where we may struggle with whom we really are. Similar to Janie Crawford in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie struggles with identity. Throughout
Lily Owens, is a white 14 year old girl living in the south during the 60’s. She is the main character in “The Secret Life Of Bees”, Lily has grown up without a mother, Her perspectives on things are a lot different because of this. Lily is a very complex, and difficult character to understand.
In the book The Secret Life of Bees the author brings to light the Jim Crow era in which Lily, the main character, lives in and is influenced by the world around her.
“People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.” Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Secret Life of Bees, highlights this theme in her work. In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, the horrendous events that Lily Owens encounters in her young life are necessary in her journey to adulthood as she develops into a strong, resilient, loving, forgiving young woman. The result of Lily’s mom dying when Lily was only four years old, T. Ray abusing Lily day in and day out, and Lily experiencing racism first hand, have all been a big part of Lily’s young life and have shaped her into the person she is today.
Lily Owens is the main character as well as the narrator in the novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. Lily is a fourteen year old white girl living in racially segregated Sylvan, South Carolina. The story is set in the mid 1960’s. When we are first introduced to Lily, she lives with her abusive father on a peach farm.
In Secret Life of bees Lily was in an atmosphere that she always wanted to be in. A family atmosphere. Growing up with one parent must have been difficult to feel the warmth of a family, plus it was just Lily and her father. Once Lily got to South Carolina and was surrounded by the Boatwright family she finally felt the comfort of what it’s like to have a family. Back home Lily would just stay home but with the Boatwright family she would make honey and be out doors a lot more.
The Secret Life of Bees begins in the town of Sylvan, South Carolina and tells the story of 14-year-old Lily Melissa Owens. She lives on a peach orchard with her neglectful and abusive father, T. Ray. They have Black maid named Rosaleen who is a companion and caretaker of Lily. The book opens with Lily's discovery of bees in her bedroom and the story of how she killed her mother. The eve before her birthday Lily sneaks out into the peach orchard to visit the box of her mother’s belongings which is buried there however before she can hide them T. Ray finds her and punishes her. The next day Rosaleen and Lily head into town where Rosaleen is arrested for pouring her bottle of tobacco spit on three white men. Lily breaks her out of prison and they begin hitchhiking toward Tiburon, SC, a town Lily had seen on the back of a picture of a black Virgin Mary which her mom had owned. They hitch a ride to Tiburon and once there, they buy lunch at a general store, and Lily sees a picture of the same Virgin Mary on a jar of honey. She asks the store owner where it came from and he gives her directions to the Boatwright house. They then meet the makers of the honey: August, May and June Boatwright, who are all black. Lily makes up a wild story about being recently orphaned. The sisters welcome Rosaleen and Lily into their home. They are then introduced to beekeeping and the Boatwright’s way of life. Lily learns more about the Black Madonna honey that the sisters make. She begins working
What makes your identity? Is it your past, your family, your hopes, dreams, fears? It is all that and more. Your identity makes up who you are. It is always growing and ever-changing. Your identity is what makes you human. Finding it can be a struggle, maintaining it can be even harder. Katniss and Peeta in The Hunger Games were two examples of finding and holding onto your identity. Katniss was the girl who had to grow up to fast. She had to learn how to provide for her family, to be strong. Katniss thought to do this she had to create a wall to hold back all the childish things that were apart her. She put on a mask to grow up but to also protect herself from those who would wish to abuse her innocence. The mask, the wall they kept her