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Bees That Teach a Lesson in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Decent Essays

“Lets imagine for a moment that we are tiny enough to follow a bee into a hive. Usually the first thing we would have to ge used to is the darkness”(Kidd 82). The bee is an insect that spends all day working: working to create a home, working to spread pollen and working to create honey. A bee's life and the society of bees can be closely related to the life of humans. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the author conveys her lessons about human life through the imagery of bees. Bee's need a queen in order to survive. While there are thousands of worker bees per successful hive, the queen, lays the eggs and the thousands of bees worship her; August teaches Lily, “'...they all depend on her to keep [the system] going… …show more content…

However, her father, T. Ray thwarts this and will not allow Lily to bring books to the peach stand. The job becomes tedious and boring, “I just sat out there and thought about how much I hated the peach stand, how completely and absolutely I hated it” (Kidd 16). Because of this, Lily is unable to ever begin to try to find her role in life, as she is forced to do one she clearly does not belong in and does not enjoy. Kidd clearly mirrors the way males are portrayed in the hive and in the society in which Lily finds herself. In the bee hive males are of minimal use; “Each colony is a family unit, comprising of a single, egg-laying female or queen and her many sterile daughters called workers... Males are reared only at the times of the year when their presence is required” (Kidd 66). The bee hive does not need males in order to survive, over the course of the story Lily also learns that male presence is unneeded in order to survive and have a family. In the novel males are viewed in a negative light (with the exception of Zach and Neil). Every male Lily has been in contact with was harsh and showed no respect for women. Her father teaches her to be a victim of male abuse and does not show her any kindness. Her Nanny Rosaleen also threw her husband out of the house after three years of marriage because he was abusive. Next she encounters the white men who hit Rosaleen and send her

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