...In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the author shows the racial struggle between blacks and whites in the 60s, during the Civil Right movement. The main black characters, Roseleen, August, May, June and Zach face a lot of difficulties as blacks; for instance, Roseleen was having a hard time to get the right to vote, June has a sense of intimidation towards white and May’s suicide is indirectly connected to the racial problem. Moreover, when Roseleen was just walking on the street, some Caucasian men pick a fight with her and then they beat her up until she almost dies. On the other hand, the main white characters, Lily and her father T. Ray, are racist. We can see how racism is influential when it comes to parents to child, and we...
Words: 1860 - Pages: 8
...Adrian Martinez Ms. Harris Per.4 3/9/16 The Secret Life of Bees Thematic Analysis Essay The classic novel ” Secret Life of Bees “, by Sue Monk Kidd does not have only one theme. This novel is set in 1964, which takes place right after the Civil Rights Acts. This means that the book comes across difficulties with it’s characters including racism throughout the story line. The main protagonist, Lily Owens who is age bound of turning 14, experiences challenges during her childhood that change the way she copes up with her emotions as she grows up turning into a woman. Lily also had problems facing the truth about who she is and what happened to her mother. First, In the novel the author Sue Monk Kidd, presents a strong message about...
Words: 816 - Pages: 4
...Literary Analysis “The Secret Life of Bees” Sometimes in life you could feel broken and alone. Whenever someone is hurting you in any way or you just feel alone and you have nobody you can trust with your problems. In “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd the protagonist named Lily Owen escapes an abusive home to learn more about her dead mother’s past where she learns the value of love, friendship, and family. And she learns that you will always find people you belong with. the main character Lily Owens has been abused almost her whole life by her father named T-Ray. Lily says she “I asked God to do something about T-Ray but it's only getting worse”(pg.3). After Lily’s mother left when Lily was 4 years old T-Ray has been taking out his anger on Lily and the matter was made worse after the death of her mother that Lily likely caused. T-Ray insults, lies, ignores, and punishes Lily by making her kneel on grits until she is bleeding. “‘As long as you live under my roof...
Words: 468 - Pages: 2
...what it is like to love, be loved and supported. In Sue Monk Kidd's, "The Secret Life of Bees," the story of Lily's experience as a teenager transitioning into a young woman is explored. She begins the story as a naive, neglected child and by the end, Lily is a more matured, young women. Within her journey, Lily experiences the influences of spiritually and motherhood . Lily was raised in the 1960's South by her abusive father, T.Ray. Daily, Lily struggles with the void she feels for her mother and T.Ray's physical and emotional abuse. After discovering a town affiliated with her dead mother, Lily joins forces with her caregiver, Rosaleen, and they both escape their burdens that remain in Sylvan, South Carolina. Lily's burdens include the absence of a mother and her abusive father and Rosaleen's include an unjust arrest for being African American. The...
Words: 1577 - Pages: 7
...importantly, killed four young girls. Connecting to The Secret Life of Bees, this lesson has a great potential to contribute to the novel. There are a multitude of examples where characters in the novel will have to forgive others who have wronged them. One great example is how, even if Lily never comes around to completely forgive T-Ray for his aggressive, abusive attitude towards her , God will forgive him if he stays faithful. Also, more recently in the novel, Lily will have to forgive June for how she acted towards her at the Daughters of Mary service. The Secret Life of Bees connects to chapter four in one very predominate way. In the novel, May has a wailing wall, on which she expresses the things that upset her in an attempt to ‘let go’ of the sadness. When Lily visits the wall, she pulls out a piece of paper with the writing: “Birmingham, Sept 15, four little angels dead” (Kidd 80). This slip of paper is an allusion to the bombings that occurred in Birmingham. It demonstrates the connection that May was once deeply saddened by this event, so she calmed herself by writing it down and adding it to her wall. I can predict that, on the other slips of paper, there are varying events that depressed May written down, whether it be a normal, daily issue of her’s or an event as harrowing as the Birmingham church bombing. Connecting to my own life, there have been, unfortunately, a plethora of different times in my life where I could have benefitted from a visit to a wailing...
Words: 672 - Pages: 3
...It is natural for most to yearn for a quantifiable method to douse the world in ethically positive and moral correctness. Yet the desire for justice may often morph into an alternate reality of self- righteousness, sometimes veering in the opposite direction of the path of unbiased objectivity. In the novel The Secret Life of Bee’s, author Sue Monk Kidd illustrates the indefinite line between authentic morality and self- righteous justice. Rosaleen is a colored housemaid in South Carolina in 1964. Rosaleen, both perverse and determined in nature, goes into town, accompanied by fourteen year old Lily Owens. As the two are curtly greeted by a posse of local authoritative racists, Rosaleen proudly declares “I’m going to register my name so I can vote” (31). Her action, while legal on documented paper is regarded as felonious to most white men of the region. The men mock Rosaleen until she “lifted her snuff jug, which was filled with black spit, and calmly poured it across the tops of the men’s shoes, moving her hand in little...
Words: 515 - Pages: 3
...In the novel ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ written by Sue Monk Kidd a 14-year-old little white girl, Lily Owens, lives with her terrible father, T.Ray, who never gives his love and interest to her. For the reason, she decides to run away from her father and moves from Sylvan to Tiburon. In Tiburon she meets a new reliable guardian, August. By giving two different relationships, the author, Sue Monk Kidd, helps us to understand ‘Love’ which is one of the themes in the novel. The first relationship is between Lily and her father, T.Ray, who is insensitive and cruel to Lily because he never gives his affection, and he punishes her in brutal way. Lily spends on upsetting time with her father after her mother passed away when Lily was 4 years old....
Words: 649 - Pages: 3
...overcome and confront your problems. In order to succeed in dealing with your problems and difficulties. you must come face to face with these complications. This idea is quite clear in the novel ‘’ The Secret life of Bees’’, by Sue Monk Kidd. Throughout the book, Lily is trying to confront the guilt of killing her mother. In the start of the novel, she is constantly thinking about her mother and dreams about speaking to her. By the end of the novel, August tells Lily the truth of who her mother was and her situation. Lily has trouble accepting all of this at first and is furious at her mother for abandoning her and not being the loving,warm mother she had always thought she was. However, eventually she accepted who her mother was. In the novel, all of the characters are forced to come face to face with their hardships. They each...
Words: 594 - Pages: 3
...service. I would argue the opposite party of this statement. I think the colored population in America still has the same issues as before the Civil Rights time period, just in different context. As seen in “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett, it is hard for the colored population to hold a position of work for extended periods of time. The change from this time period to today has sadly come very subtly. As recorded in September of 2015 the white population of America holds an unemployment rate of 4.1%, the colored population in America holds an unemployment rate of 9.2% (over double the white population.) These numbers do not show any vast improvement from pre-Civil Rights Movement and post-Civil Rights Movement. As seen throughout “The Secret Life of Bees” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” there is a strong bias held towards the colored population in not just court justice, but even small occurrences. An example pulled from “To Kill a Mockingbird” being when Tom Robinson (a colored man) is wrongfully accused of raping and assaulting Mayella Ewell. Even after the jury and crowd was provided enough evidence to prove Tom innocent, the jury still found him to be guilty under a bias. The white crowd also found this conscientious joyous. Today this bias is still often seen. Even in the smallest slurs or in our stereotypes presented to colored people. Colored people also can be seen by white people as what they aren't. In "The Help," the colored people weren't seen as the business type of people...
Words: 549 - Pages: 3
...The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd has many life lessons in it. It has examples of family problems, racial problems, and it also shows how love is not affected just because of race. In the book, Lily's life is compared to a bee's life constantly. From how she is lost without the queen bee, or in other words her mom, or how Lily needs the touch and care from loved ones just like the bees do. One epigraph from chapter nine says “ The whole fabric of honey bee society depends on communication- on an innate ability to send and receive messages, to encode and decode information”, this quote is related to not just this chapter, but this whole book because Lily is not always truthful about her life back in Sylvan and she does not tell the Boatwright sisters everything that is going on. In chapter nine, Lily has an internal conflict and begins to feel bad about her lies that she has been telling August. She wants to tell August the truth but she is afraid that the truth will do more bad than good and that August will call T. Ray to come get Lily. Some of the lies Lily has told August...
Words: 638 - Pages: 3
...struggle is inevitably shaped, for better, or for worse, through the experience. Sue Monk Kidd does just that in her novel, The Secret Life of Bees, incorporating literary devices, such as indirect characterization, symbolism, and allusions, which shape not only the main character Lily, but those she interacts with as well. Throughout the novel, these literary devices create a lasting image within the reader of the struggles of racism and one girl’s quest to find the truth about her mother. Early on in the novel, Kidd employs indirect characterization to portray Rosaleen as a rash person, contributing to the atmosphere of...
Words: 844 - Pages: 4
...“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself” (George Bernard Snow). Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, centered around the development of the life of Lily Owens, a young, South Carolinian girl. Upon running away from her abusive father, Lily unwittingly set in motion a series of encounters and experiences that would later help to define her own character. This novel is the story of Lily’s coming-of-age, a sequence of events of drastic mental maturation, and in each of the most critical encounters and experiences, Kidd emphasized their meanings through the application of devices, such as indirect characterization, symbolism, and allusion. Together, they demonstrated what Lily believed in, what she wanted...
Words: 1055 - Pages: 5
...The Secret Life Of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. Book Report, Dorthea Søiland The secret life of bees centres on Lily’s search for clues and connections to her mother, who was killed when Lily was a little girl. We get to follow her journey as she runs away from her abusive father along with her nanny Rosaleen. Lily is longing to be loved, because the lack of it in her past life is destroying her. “People who think dying is the worst thing, don’t know a thing about life” Lily, p2. The novel is an excellent written drama. It explores race, love and the idea of family and home in troubled times. The author of the book, Sue Monk Kidd, is a well-known writer who has written other known books such as “The Mermaid Chair”(2005) and “A Mother-Daughter Story”(2010). She has been on the New York Times bestselling list twice, which one of them were with this very novel. The secret life of bees was published in 2002 by Penguin Books New York. The story takes place in South Carolina in the 1960’s, which we can say is a time were racism was on it’s worst. Time and place has a lot to do with the story, and we get to look into a time were being black wasn’t easy. The main character of the book is fourteen years old Lily. She is a brave and smart girl, whose only wish for a birthday present is to know a little about her mother. Her fear of living a life without being loved is getting her to write poems, which she’s good at. All-tough Lily doesn’t have a mother she has a father, T....
Words: 1924 - Pages: 8
...Name of Institution Analysis of Two Poems by Maya Angelou Name of Student Course Name and Number Name of Professor Paper Due Date In Maya Angelou’s poem “They Went Home”, the persona has her reference on married men whom think of her as a friend and nothing more. Not a woman to them but a girl (Zefferino). However, they have a high perception of her personality but don’t have feelings for her like she does for them. “I had an air of mystery”. The men referenced had the persona think that the relationship that they had could turn out to be more than it seemed to be. They think of her as kind, clean and humorous. Despite this they don’t want to be in a relationship with her. The men that the poet references in the poem liked the persona because of her physical attributes and wanted to get involved with her physically, sexually. They wanted a physical relationship (Zefferino). “They liked my smile, my wit, my hips”. The attributes in this line specify in order the number of men that the persona desired, three men. The imagery keys the picture of a woman that receives the kind of love that she thinks she ought to be given. The persona is insecure and has a low self-pride because of the rejection that she faces. Men want to lay with her but do not want to stay with her because they all return to their wives. The last sentence of the first two stanzas, shows that the persona is willing and expecting to be used sexually by men that she...
Words: 1211 - Pages: 5
...Name: Matthew Zipay¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ . Summer Reading Double Entry Journal- The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Boxes will expand as you type. Textual Evidence Analysis 1. He cocked his ear toward the wall with pretend seriousness. “ I don’t hear any buzzing,” he said, and twirled his figure beside his temple. “I guess they must have flown out of that cuckoo clock you call a brain. You wake me up again, Lily, and I’ll get out the Martha Whites, you hear me?” Page 5 This shows that T-Ray is tough on Lily and that he doesn’t have time for her games. This could be a reason why Lily wants to find her mother. 2. “The truth is your mother ran off and left you.” Page 39...
Words: 599 - Pages: 3
