...In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, it is unquestionable that T. Ray is an unfatherly figure. He demonstrates this by the way reacts when Deborah abandons the family. During this traumatic time, he is selfish and lets his own feelings block his judgement; which carries on for the rest of his life. Instead of tending to and raising his poor, heart-broken child, he ignores her. As Lily grows into her teenage years, he gets worse. This statement is proven when Lily says: “I had to ask God repeatedly to do something about T. Ray. He’d gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse” (11). During this time, he becomes more abusive. His harsh punishments are unacceptable for a father to force a child to do. An example...
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...In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, August Boatwright functions as a mother figure for Lily Owens because she is dependable and wise. August is dependable because she is creating a considerable environment for Lily. Lily explains, “I love this place with my whole heart” (Kidd 225). When Lily refers to “this place”, she means the pink house, where August, May, and June live. Lily is obviously comfortable in the pink house and loves the people in it too. August is also dependable because Lily trusts her enough to tell her the truth about herself. Even though August knows Lily is lying, she pines for Lily to become comfortable around August, May, and June so she will feel content. August is wise because she knows there is something wrong...
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...In Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Secret Life of Bees” many characters shape Lil’s maturity, one of them being the main antagonist T.Ray. T.Ray promotes the stereotype of the classic Abusive and Racist Father figure, with this having to play a major role in shaping Lily with conflict. One form of the abusive ways T.Ray treated Lily is physical abuse, this is occurs at manifest in the beginning of the novel, infact it would be nearly impossible for a reader to not have an eye on the text and to notice the violence. The very first occurence of the abusive aspect of T.Ray is shown in the first chapter, “(*Insert Quote on page 7*)”. The other form of T.Ray’s abusive trait is speech, this occurs multiple times with nasty words such as ‘Wh*re’....
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...Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees revolves around fourteen-year-old Lily Owens, a determinedly stubborn, friendless, motherless girl living in South Carolina during the 1960’s. From the first chapter of the book, Lily’s character is significantly shaped by her mother’s absence, which is accounted to an accident occurring when Lily was only three, perhaps even at the fault of the young girl herself. In addition to affecting her personality, this traumatic experience drives her to seek maternal care and belonging as she runs away to Tiburon, South Carolina and the plot unfolds. Independence and determination make up large portions of Lily’s character. Growing up with only her emotionally detached and almost cruel father, whom she refers to as “T. Ray” in place of daddy, she was never allowed to take part in social endeavors and even resorted to sewing her own clothes and using...
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... Lily, has to deal with every day. The Secret Life of Bees is a novel about a young girl who leaves her father in search of a new life and ends up finding the Boatwright sisters and finds out more regarding mother. Lily’s journey hasn’t been easy especially when it came to her mother, Deborah. Her mother died when Lily was 4 years old. Lily shot her on accident and killed her. So naturally Lily feels so much guilt from that, idealization followed, then hatred, then forgiveness, and lastly acceptance. This all happened in a span of about 6 weeks. In Sue Monk Kidd’s, The Secret Life of Bees, Lily moves through stages of guilt for what she did, infatuation with her mother, anger, forgiveness, and then acceptance that everyone makes mistakes....
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...The Secret Life of Blacks Sue Monk Kidd is a writer from Sylvester, Georgia, best known for her 2002 novel The Secret Life of Bees. The novel begins with a 14 year old, Lily Owens, in the summer of 1964 in Sylvan, South Carolina o runs away with her black housekeeper and stays with a black family. Lily lived with T. Ray, her father, and her housekeeper, Rosaleen. T. Ray, being abusive, lead Lily’s mother away. She eventually comes back in efforts to get a then 4 year old Lily. In the heat of an argument with her husband, Deborah drops a gun that Lily accidentally picks up and kills her mother. The Secret Life of Bees is a book that shows many types of interracial interactions such as; mentor-mentee, intimate relationship, caregiver, friendship, resentment, and hatred. The mentor-mentee relationship in this book is expressed by Clayton Forrest and Zach Taylor. Zach’s aspiration to be a lawyer, a title not commonly held by a black american, is questioned by all, except Clayton Forrest. Clayton Forrest instead of knocking his dreams, mentors him and teaches Zach about lawyer duties, even giving him stuff to read and keeping him updated in some legal matters. Seeing...
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...doesn’t matter how old you are, at the end, you can be an old guy and haven’t experience a lot. Maturity is the growth of the inside you. You can’t buy maturity; you can achieve it whenever you want. It is just something that comes in the right moment. A great example of maturity without thinking of age is Lily Owens, the protagonist of Sue Monk Kidd’s book, The Secret Life of Bees. This book is a perfect example because it reflects the high level of maturity a fourteen years old girl has. Maturity comes from different forms, it can be from good experiences or from bad expereinces but at the end maturity is maturity and it is something that someone is blessed with, it is a gift....
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...Sue Monk Kidd wrote the book The Secret Life Of Bees, the book takes place in the year of 1964 in Sylvan, South Carolina. Lily Owens is a fourteen year old white girl who lives on a peach farm with her father T-Ray, who’s abusive. Lying in her bed one night She’s visited by bees that seem to be very comfortable with her. Lily carries the guilt of her mother's death with her every day. She supposedly shot her mother when she was only four years old on accident but her memory of that day is blurred, her mother and father were arguing and she went to go pick up the gun for her mother that she’d dropped and it went off and killed her mother by mistake. Lily has a housekeeper Rosaleen who has cared for her ever since her mom's death. One evening Rosaleen is watching television and on the screen President Johnson signing the civil...
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...Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Secret Life of Bees” tells the story of Lily Owens, a 14 year old white girl in South Carolina, living on a peach farm with her verbally and mentally abusive father, whom she does not call daddy, but rather T. Ray. Her life is revolved around her blurred memory of the afternoon when her mother was killed. Lily is dealing with the absence of her mother and she has her “stand-in” mother Rosaleen, a black woman who is their housekeeper. Lily’s most prized possessions are the items of her mother’s that remain after she is gone, a picture of her mother Deborah and a wooden picture of black Mary. On the back of the picture of black Mary “Tiburon, South Carolina” is written on the back of it. After Rosaleen attempts to vote and ends up in injured and in jail, Lily and her escape from the hospital and began hitch-hiking to Tiburon, South Carolina, in Lily’s attempt to trace down evidence of her mother. As soon as they arrive in South Carolina, they go to a general store for lunch and Lily recognizes the same black mary that she has a picture of on a bottle of honey being sold at the store. They receive directions to the place where the honey came from, the Boatwright residence and this is where they stay for the rest of the novel. They meet the Boatwright sisters, August, May and June....
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...In “The Secret Life of Bees” Sue Monk Kidd sets the novel in South Carolina 1960’s, a time where Civil Rights movements were rising. Affecting the communities in Southern U.S. The protagonist Lily Owens grew up with her abusive father T. Ray, and lost her mother at the age of four in a tragic accident involving Lily accidentally shooting her mother. To stand in as a mother for Lily, Rosaleen—an African American field worker for T. Ray’s peach farm— was brought into Lily’s life. Overtime in the novel, Sue Monk Kidd shaped Lily’s and Rosaleen's relationship to show the matureness that develops throughout the story, emphasising different scenes where a changed occurred in their relationship where it grew stronger and more independant. Lily and...
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...In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd portrays Lily’s desperate search for someone to resemble a mother figure; fortunately, Lily discovers to mothers between her caretaker Rosaleen, who is extremely caring and nurturing towards her, along with their new hostess August, who immediately sees what Lily desires and requires. For instance, Rosaleen doesn’t “want [Lily] to get [herself] hurt” (100), so when she does faint, Rosaleen throws all sense of modesty to the winds and “pull[s] up the skirt of her dress [...], showing most of her thighs” (112) in the process, to make sure Lily is cool enough. Even though Rosaleen isn’t Lily’s true mother, she thinks of Lily as her child and a mother never wants to see their child hurt or injured....
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...“The whole fabric of honey bee society depends on communication- on an innate ability to send and receive messages, to encode and decode information.” (passage 1) In the classic novel The Secret Life of Bees, author Sue Monk Kidd uses the bee colony as a symbol to show how close-knit the Boatwright sisters, Lily, Rosaleen and the rest of the Daughters of Mary are and how they’d do anything to protect each other. In nature, bees and their colonies are exactly the same way. Throughout the novel, especially in the beginning, readers get a close understanding of how the main character, Lily Owens’, father, T. Ray, is inexplicably abusive. This harsh environment carries in towards the end of the story when T.Ray shows up to the Boatwright house where Lily is staying, intent on bringing her home with him. However, the Daughters of Mary come to her rescue with just a call from August. “The four of them lined up beside us, clutching their pocketbooks up against their bodies like they might have to use them to beat the living hell out of somebody. I wondered how we must look to him. A bunch of women- Mabelee four foot ten, Lunelle’s hair standing straight up on her head begging to be braided, Violet muttering, “Blessed Mary,” and Queenie- tough old Queenie- with her hands on her hips and her lip shoved out, every inch of her saying,...
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...worker bee is just over a centimeter long and weighs only about sixty milligrams; nevertheless, she can fly with a load heavier than herself " (Kidd 257). Sue Monk Kidd constructs a book, The Secret Life of Bees, to tell the story of a girl named Lily Owens. Lily struggles with the weight of her mother's death on her shoulders and how she may have been at fault. Her home is corrupt with a father who does not treat her right. In search of answers about her mother, Lily runs off with her caretaker, Rosaleen, to answer those questions. She finds herself in a setting in South Carolina, with a group of tight knit sisters. Towards the end of Lily's journey, the answers of her questions have been revealed by one of the sisters named, August. August serves as a role model to Lily because she is willing to tell the truth and listen to her. With all of these answers, Lily is able to make out that she had done it, but learns that is was truly a fluke. The heavy load on her back has been dropped of giving her a sense of being "freedom". Sue Monk Kidd illustrates the struggle of life and how troubles can bring you down. She continues by showing that you have to let the struggles drift away and move on....
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...Honors Summer Essay Throughout my life, I've believed first and foremost in equality. But with it, I believe in power and pride. Not the power that was and continues to be used to discriminate human beings on behalf of their color or gender. Not the power that turns into selfishness and greed, but the power that stands with people who have been thought as lesser than their neighbor by virtue of their appearance. I have and always will be a strong feminist, who believes in equality. So last year, it did not take more than a chat with Mrs. Tobey and her recommendation of The Secret Life Of Bees, to have me buying the book soon after. Sue Monk Kidd, the author of the story uses the book as not just a symbol of three women who have each experienced...
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...During The Secret Life of Bees, we can visualize many different themes. Throughout the novel, we see Lily begin to mature and grow as a character. She deals with a lot of ups and downs throughout her life and the book, and she learns how to deal with them. In The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd uses racism and equality to argue a theme that everyone should be treated fairly, have the same rights, and have respect for one another, and that we are all the same no matter our race. This book ties into the 1960’s because during this time, the same racial problems were happening as well. In the beginning of the novel, we soon realize that Lily’s mother had died a few years earlier, and that Rosaleen was there to help around the house and...
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