Secret Life Of Bees Symbolism

Lily starts off stuck living in an unloving, abusive household and decides to free herself from the negative atmosphere that she had been living in her whole life. Lily is perpetually abused by her father. He forces her to kneel on Martha White's, gets exasperated every time she speaks, and yells at her for no reason. Lily is not the only one noticing the terrible treatment, Rosaleen does too. Once after Lily had to kneel on the Martha White's Rosaleen said to her, “Look at you, child. Look what he’s done to you” (Kidd 25). Noticing the unloving treatment Lily gets, Rosaleen knew that their household was demoralizing place for Lily to be in, which is why she didn’t question when Lily when she later runs away. Lily one day realizes she needs to do something about her horrible life at home. While sitting in her room she hears a voice in her

An allusion is a literary device to express a reference to another piece of media. Allusions are used frequently in A Secret life of Bees to influence the characters personality traits and underlying story themes. In the novel, Sue Mon Kidd uses constant allusions to the Virgin Mary. She writes using Lily’s voice, “Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed.” Page 2. This is an example of a biblical allusion. The Virgin Mary was the virgin mother of Jesus Christ. She was a 1st-century BC Galilean Jewish woman of Nazareth according to the New Testament and the Holy Quran. In the novel Secret Life of Bees, she is often cited as “the blessed Mary” or “blessed among women” by the followers of Mary.

Sue Monk Kidd uses allusion and personification in her book The Secret Life of Bees to help create an image for the setting of the book.

The Black Mary made Lily think about her life and what could be done to make it better. It made Lily think about the positives and negatives, and that she now had people to relate and connect to.

In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the color blue, a symbol of love, allows Lily to differentiate between people who truly love her. Lily believes that for someone to truly love her, they must know the most trivial detail of her: her favorite color, blue. For example, Lily, in an argument with her father, blatantly asks, “do you know what my favorite color is?”, however, her father responds with,”I know one thing, and that’s I’m going to find you…”. Although one would expect a father to know such fact, Terrence, her father, does not know Lily’s favorite color and does not take the time to even think of the color’s importance. The color blue represents a fatherly and motherly love that Lily obviously lacks; due to her lack

Lily Owens represents the main character of The Secret Life of Bees. Lily is a fourteen year old white girl who lives only with her father, T-Ray, and African-American nanny/caregiver and only friend, Rosaleen. Together, they live on a peach farm in South Carolina.

The idea of having a secret life is enough to intrigue almost anyone.  With a title like The Secret Life of Bees, the reader cannot help but wonder what the secret is, and how it plays into the story.  As children, we all read books that talked about an escape to a mystical place that allowed the characters to escape from reality for a while.  In many cases, the reader viewed this as an escape they also desired, but most times could not fully relate to the character’s experiences.  Nonetheless, the setting of the story was intriguing.  Sue Monk Kidd uses setting to influence her characters by setting The Secret Life of Bees in the south, having it take place in the 1960’s, and by creating characters that depend on the setting for their happiness.

In The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd creates an allusion to the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, to illustrate the impact of the Ku Klux Klan’s scheme to terrorize social activists, on Lily. In order to protest integration, the Ku Klux Klan planted dynamite underneath the girl's bathroom in the Baptist church, which resulted in a tragedy that stole the lives of four innocent children. Throughout the course of the plot, while exploring the wailing wall and the slips of paper placed into the wall, Lily finds a slip which expresses, “Birmingham, Sept 15, four little angels dead” (98). The phrase “four little angels” displays that the slip of paper refers to children. Therefore, the date on the slip of paper, September

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a novel about a girl named Lily. Lily lives in South Carolina in 1964. She has an abusive father and a mother who died 10 years ago. Rosaleen, Lily’s mother figure and caretaker, got into trouble and got into jail. Lily then decided to escape with Rosaleen to Tiburon, South Carolina. There they find the beekeeping Boatwright sisters (August, June and May) who hold the secret to Lily’s mother’s past. In the book The Secret Life of Bees there are many sad negative events; however, every negative event has a positive outcome.

Lily overhears a conversation between June Boatwright and August, where June explains that the color of her skin matters and that she does not belong in the Boatwright house “but she’s white, August” (5, 87). Lily “[wants] to make [August] love [her] so [she could stay in the pink house] forever” but she knows that she will never truly “belong”, because she is not the same as theirs. Another example of this is during the weekly meeting of the Daughter of Mary, each member and sister would go up to the Statue of Mary and touch her heart. Lily took part in this ritual and as it was her turn to go touch Mary’s heart, June turned off the music and lily again realized “I am not one of [them]” (6, 111). Lily desires to be a part of their family, but she struggles with the feeling of being an outsider. At the end of the novel, lily is faced with a demand from her father T.Ray to come “home”, lily then realizes that physical home is not “home”, she belongs in the Boatwright house “ Lily can have a home here for as long as she wants” (14,

Throughout the novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the characters are determined to achieve a goal or get some answers in some way. The novel’s main character and narrator is Lily Owens, a fourteen year old girl; the story is set in South Carolina during the summer of 1964. During this summer, Lily searches for answers about her mother’s life. Hardships cause people to show their determination in life because they strive to achieve a specific goal as demonstrated by Lily, T. Ray, and Rosaleen.

The Secret Life of Bees delineates an inspirational story in which the community, friendship and faith guide the human spirit to overcome anything. The story follows Lily Owens, a 14 year old girl who desperately wants to discover the cause of her mothers death. Her father T. Ray gives her no answers, which leads their maid, Rosaleen, to act as her guardian. Together, Lily and Rosaleen run away to Tiburon, South Carolina and find a welcoming community. It is in Tiburon that Lily learns many life lessons, including many about herself. In her novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd explores a theme of spiritual growth through Lily's search for home as well as a maternal figure.

When Lily finally decides to run away from T.Ray to Tiburon with Rosaleen, the housemaid, in the movie this act is shown more as her wanting to get away from him and not so much as her being curious about what really is in Tiburon, South Carolina. Also, while at the Boatwrights house Lily did not act in a curious manner, but was mostly doing what she could to blend in so she was accepted, and not kicked out. When T.Ray tells Lily that her mother left her as a child, Lily refuses to believe so. She knows that it was just another punishment he uses to torment her, and only seeks to find the real truth at the very end of the movie. When he tries to take her away from the Boatwrights, she asks him before he leaves, “Did you lie about my mother leaving me.” The quality of Lily’s curiosity is lost in the movie. Lily’s life is represented more as a drama than her being curious and seeking answers about her mother, and the black Madonna. Because the movie lacks the value of curiosity it takes away from what the true story

Every girl goes through a time when she is trying to find herself- find out who she is. Every girl tries to build a personality; a sense of self. She is filling in the puzzle of her with puzzle pieces that don’t have a determined shape. The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd is a book about this searching. The main character, a teenage girl, is going through this time when she is trying to find out who she is. In The Secret Life of Bees, this girl, Lily Owens, is living unhappily. Her mother was killed when she was very young, and her father is cruel. Lily decided she had had enough and runs away. The Secret Life of Bees is a story about a girl who is finding herself, finding out who she is and who she wants to be. This leads to a journey where she finds a place where she can thrive, and develop her sense of self.

Emanuel agrees in her paper “The archetypal mother: the Black Madonna in Sue Monk Kidd 's The Secret Life of Bees” saying that “[Kidd] speaks at length about a woman’s plight in both conventional society,”(Catherine B. Emanuel). August understands this progress of injustice. While talking to Lily about her life, August confesses that she did love a man. “I loved him enough. I just loved my freedom more”(146). This shows that August had to decide whether she wanted to have her freedom or to be married. Kidd writing about a black woman that choose a career over the traditional lifestyle of a women reinforce the notice that anyone can improve and innovate the world as much as white man. In the novel, August shows Lily that a woman can do anything a man can do by breaking from conventional ideas that a women can live a successful life without a man is normal. Laurie Grobman agreed in her essay in “Teaching Cross-Racial Texts: Cultural Theft in ‘The Secret Life of Bees” by saying that “August fits Levy’s description of the ‘model of female creativity, the repository of women 's history and the provider of mother enduring care,”(21). August is a role model to encourage women to break the mold of what a woman is supposed to be.