Bill Fenter's The Bee Tree

In Sue Monk Kidd’s, The Secret Life of Bees, an open jar symbolizes Lily’s opportunity to escape T. Ray’s repression. For instance, after a fight with her father, Lily noticed the bee jar was empty and she “...heard a voice say, Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open” (41). In this example, the jar represents her situation, and Lily is the bee that escaped. Previously, T. Ray restrained Lily like a jar imprisoning a bee. When the jar opened, a new opportunity presented itself and Lily grasped the chance at freedom. She decided to run away similarly to the bee leaving the jar. Soon after this realization, Lily escaped from T. Ray and the yoke he forced upon her. This author provides Lily with an alternative to enduring her father, thus advancing

Sue Monk Kidd alludes to the separation of black musical culture from white culture in her novel, The Secret Life of Bees, when comparing Elvis and Fats Domino to Miles Davis. This allusion helps clarify Lily’s provincial views and her limited knowledge of black culture. Although she tries to relate her understanding of music to Zach’s, Lily must realize that they share little in common in that field.

In society today there are still forms of segregation prevalent to the eye. Whether it’s in workplaces, schools, etc. it is still seen today. Of course, sometimes no one means to self- segregate himself or herself, sometimes it may even be subconscious. It is not intended to be mean spirited or subjective to anyone, it simply just happens. Even though people may not realize it within themselves, people still hold on to racist beliefs.

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

When a parent dies, any child will cling to the other parent for emotional support and comfort for dealing with such a loss. In Lily’s case, she wanted her fathers support more than anything but he was cold, abusive, and stuck in the past, that he wasn’t able to give her anything except for take his anger out on her, when she disobeyed him. Although if someone does not get that support from the other parent, and if someone else is there that is understanding and kind, its amazing to see how much you can start to really rely on them and grow a close relationship. When Lily deals with the loss of her mother and the poor treatment of her father, she doesn’t know what to do with herself, she has a load of all different kind of emotions, and it really harms her well-being. Lily deals with guilt because she has visuals that she was the one that killed her mother, and on top of that she has her father telling her that her mother left her and she just abandoned her, making Lily feel unimportant and then at the same time guilt. Rosaleen is the closest role model that Lily has for a mother, Rosaleen cares and sticks up for Lily but Lily doesn’t really have the mother-daughter connection with her. Although Rosaleen provides comfort for Lily, she helps her with her father and in return Lily defends Rosaleen as well as save her life from the hospital after she got beaten.

In the letter “Birds and Bees? No, Let’s talk about Dollars and Cents”, Ben Stein, a lawyer and financial columnist for The New York Times, writes to his son to talk to him about life, and more importantly, money. He wants his son to know the struggles that his great-grandparents had to endure because they did not gain any capital and try to advance themselves financially. Because his son has grown up in a good home and the author is only the second in his family to accumulate any real capital, he wants his son to know what it's like to be successful and persuade him to work hard in order to avoid the struggles that his great-grandparents had to endure.

Imagine you have to live the rest of your life knowing that you killed your own mother. That's exactly what Lily Owens has to live with for the rest of her life. In the story “The Secret Life Of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily was only four years old, her parents were fighting and her mother Debroah dropped her gun and Lily picked it up and shot it. Shortly after the accident, Lily’s father hired a nanny to do the chores and look after Lily. When she turned 14, she and Rosaleen ran away to look for any evidence of her mother because her father lied to her about what happened to her.

Today I will be talking about the book named “The Secret Life of Bees,” written by Sue Monk Kidd. This book is about a young girl who has to deal with an abusive father and in return she runs away with her black babysitter to a beekeeper she believes may know the answers to her mothers dead. In this blog post I will be talking about the racial part of the book and discussing my opinions. The book mentions the race of the people many times because it is set in 1964, during the time in which many black people had to go through many deterrents.

In the book Secret life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd , the main character Lily Owens has two compelling desires, ambitions, obligations, or influences that affect the outcome of the story. As the story unfolds, Lily is faced with an abusive dad and a mother who she loves very much. At the young age of four, Lily, still being a child, accidentally shoots and kills her mother during a confrontation. Now, the young child has two huge, impactful life-changing forces to deal with the rest of her life. She struggles with both of these until she decides to do something about it and go into the amazing world and figure out the truth behind it all. Since she was so young at the time of the events, she didn't remember what went down. She is searching the

Sue Monk Kidd portrays the time and place in the Secret Life of Bees by displaying Rosaleen working in the peach farms, then taken in to work in the house, giving the task of a housekeeper and Lily's nanny. Around ten years after, Lily turning 14, Rosaleen learns how to read and write her own name in order to turn in her ballot voting for J.F. Kennedy. Attempting to vote, Rosaleen and Lily were ambushed by a trio of white racists men, resulting in physical abuse of Rosaleen.When the police arrived, the white civilians claimed assault against Rosaleen, who is taken into jail charged with assault, theft(of a “church fan”), and abuse. Lily, caught up in between, also ended up in jail, to be later bailed out by her furious father. Determined, Lily breaks Rosaleen out of jail after finding out just how much Frank [he assaulted Rosaleen in jail so crudely that she had to go to the hospital] despised African Americans and fled to Tiburon, searching for clues about her mother Debera Owens. While finding shelter in a home with August, sister of May and June, May passes away. When the police questioned Lily's decision of staying with "colored people," he claimed that she didn't have

The Secret Life of Bees Argumentative Essay Parents have the most influence on their children. So what happens when the parent’s influence turns out to have a negative impact on their child? In the novel “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character, Lily Owens, is left with her abusive father and the housemaid, Rosaleen. When she was four years old, she killed her mother. After a run-in with the police, Rosaleen and Lily decide to leave their hometown to start a new chapter without the abuse, legal troubles, and they begin to look for answers.

Every family has parents and maybe some siblings too, it is what makes the family a family. Some kids are adopted and some are not and some like Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees got to choose her family. In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the theme that appears a lot is how much family means, even if it is chosen.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a book discussing the internal strife of a young white girl, in a very racist 1960’s south. The main character, Lily Owens, faces many problems she must overcome, including her personal dilemma of killing her own mother in an accident. Sue Monk Kidd accurately displays the irrationality of racism in the South during mid- 1960's not only by using beautiful language, but very thoroughly developed plot and character development. Kidd shows the irrationality of racism through the characters in her book, The Secret Life of Bees and shows that even during that time period, some unique people, were able to see beyond the heavy curtain of racism that separated people from each

One day, Lily and her younger sister Milly went to the carnival and on the way they passed by the zoo. This reminded Lily about how much Milly loved penguins.

I thought what a wonderful way to tell a story” (Mujica 38). The reader is often present in the kitchen with Esquivel when she writes about her past experiences in the kitchen.