Secret Life Of Bees Characterization

August tells Lily about how her mother lived with the Boatwrights but did not bring Lily with her. Lily got really angry with her mother (Deborah Fontanel) thinking, “ How dare she? How dare she leave me? I was her child.” ( Kidd 259). The next day August came with a box full of Deborah's things. One of those things was a picture of Lily and her mother. The picture clearly showed that Deborah had loved Lily very much. Lily knew then she was loved: “...my mother about the sign I wanted. The one that would let me know I was loved.” (Kidd 276). This shows a juxtaposition because Deborah left Lily; however, she had loved Lily. In summary, when Lily finds out her mother left her is an example of the juxtapositions throughout The Secret Life of

‘The Secret Life of Bees’ by Sue Monk Kidd is a wonderful and beautifully written story. ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ includes loveable characters that each have their own unique personalities. ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ also includes mystery and love, which makes it enjoyable. Although it’s not realistic, it’s still a really good read because of how the characters grow and develop throughout. Erin Collazo Miller’s book review on ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ is right about all of these things mentioned.

"New beekeepers are told that the way to find the elusive queen is by first locating her circle of attendants." (57) This quote is at the beginning of chapter three and not only foreshadows many things to come, but within the quote, two of the novel’s main metaphors are mentioned, bees and the queen, which is referring to society and a mother figure. Although this quote is largely interpreted as a metaphor for Lily looking for a new queen or mother figure, and perhaps August being that mother, I believe that it has another meaning as well. I believe that the Black Madonna also serves as a “queen” and mother figure to all the women in “The Secret Life of Bees.”

In the beginning of the book Lily, is an innocent child who just wants to be loved desperately. Even though T-Ray is cruel to her she still yearns for his affection because she feels lost and unloved without her mother. Just like the bees in her bedroom, she is aimless -- “The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam” (1). She feels a connection to these bees because she, too, is living for the sake of living, without a sense of importance or

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

This relates back to imagery by the author, painting a very clear picture of what Lily is going through in her home life and the saddest part is that she has learned to accept it. Characterization shows up throughout the book when talking about maternal figures and family life. “Later I would remember that, how she set out, a marked woman from the beginning.” This applies to all of the women and maternal figures Lily has met through her life and her time with the boatwrights. All of these women that Lily has seen are trailblazers in their own right.

The Secret Life of Bees is a heart throbbing and touching novel about a young girl named Lily Owens who goes on a long journey far away to find out the truth about her mother, and in the process, finding herself. Filled with apprehension and self doubt, Lily grew up with her abusive and cold hearted father after the death of her mother when she was just 4 years old. She didn’t know much about her aside from what she was told growing up. Lily grew up with the weight of her mother’s death on her shoulders. Subsequently after her 14th birthday, and having been beaten by her father one too many times, Lily runs away with her nanny, Rosaleen, to Tiburon, South Carolina. After stumbling across August Boatwright’s bright pink house,

Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees and Rascal Flatts "I'm Movin' On", both adequately demonstrate that a childhood of guilt can result in difficulty forgiving oneself and others. Overcoming inner conflicts as well as finding a place of belonging and contentment is a result that comes with self-forgiveness. The Secret Life of Bees is a story of a young girl named Lily Owens who, throughout the novel, faces immense obstacles. This novel focuses on the blurred memory Lily has of the death of her mother. In the novel, the reader learns that Lily was only a young child during the death of her mother and her emotionally abusive father, T. Ray, often tells her that this death was all her fault. T. Ray implements the idea that Lily was the one to who had accidentally shot her mother with a gun which causes her to grow up living with the guilt and shame of this traumatic event that took a very valuable life from her. As the plot intensifies, Lily and her strong-willed black caretaker, Rosaleen, decide to escape T. Rays sadistic tendencies and abusive behavior. After deciding to run away from T. Ray, Lily soon finds the Boatwright sisters who had a strong connection with Lily's mother before she died. While meeting the Boatwright sisters, Lily says, "I felt like she knew what a lying, murdering, hating person I really was. How I hated T. Ray, and the girls at school, but mostly myself for taking away my mother" (Kidd 71). This quote shows the destructive effect of being blamed

The Secret Life of Bees begins in the town of Sylvan, South Carolina and tells the story of 14-year-old Lily Melissa Owens. She lives on a peach orchard with her neglectful and abusive father, T. Ray. They have Black maid named Rosaleen who is a companion and caretaker of Lily. The book opens with Lily's discovery of bees in her bedroom and the story of how she killed her mother. The eve before her birthday Lily sneaks out into the peach orchard to visit the box of her mother’s belongings which is buried there however before she can hide them T. Ray finds her and punishes her. The next day Rosaleen and Lily head into town where Rosaleen is arrested for pouring her bottle of tobacco spit on three white men. Lily breaks her out of prison and they begin hitchhiking toward Tiburon, SC, a town Lily had seen on the back of a picture of a black Virgin Mary which her mom had owned. They hitch a ride to Tiburon and once there, they buy lunch at a general store, and Lily sees a picture of the same Virgin Mary on a jar of honey. She asks the store owner where it came from and he gives her directions to the Boatwright house. They then meet the makers of the honey: August, May and June Boatwright, who are all black. Lily makes up a wild story about being recently orphaned. The sisters welcome Rosaleen and Lily into their home. They are then introduced to beekeeping and the Boatwright’s way of life. Lily learns more about the Black Madonna honey that the sisters make. She begins working

The novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, and the film, My Girl, share common themes. One of the common themes is coming-of-age. This means growing up and maturing through experiences and lessons learned. The main characters in the novel, and the film learn more as they grow up, and they learn from their consequences. Lily Owens, from the novel, and Vada Sultenfuss, from the movie, are very similar characters, and learn many of the same lessons.

In addition, after Lily’s liberation from T. Ray, another character pushed Lily to make a choice without even saying a word to her and that character was Lily’s mother, Deborah, who was dead and yet she still guided Lily to her next destination. Deborah’s largest contribution to Lily’s life was leaving behind a trail of love for Lily to follow, giving Lily someplace to go when she had no home. Lily immediately knows where to go after leaving her father's trammel, for she finds a picture of Deborah in Tiburon, South Carolina. Lily’s eagerness to learn more about her mother urges her to travel to Tiburon. Lily reveals her desperation on finding out more about her mother’s love towards her when she said, “ Well, think about it. She must have been there some time in her life to have owned this picture. And if she was, a person might remember her, you never know” (Kidd 51). Lily’s voice held a sense of hope as she believed that there was something in

August explains to Lily about the built in protection that’s around our hearts to heal the pain we go through. But May does not have that built in protection, instead she goes through everyone else's pain as if she is experiencing it herself. Later Lily ponders if May goes through her pain which is hatred, abuse, and betrayal from her father. It’s visible that Lily is unfamiliar of the type of person May is, and really grieves about her when she says, “I turned my pillow over and over for the coolness, thinking about May and her wall and what the word had come to that a person needed something like that. It gave me the willies to think what might be stuffed in among those rocks. The wall brought to my mind the bleeding slabs of meat Rosaleen used to cook, the gashed she made up and down them, stuffing them with pieces of wild, bitter garlic” (Kidd 98). At this point Lily just realizes the agony May is going through. And just deeply wonders and reflects what is written on those strips of papers hidden in the dark cracks. Lily then starts to conclude the injustice happening in the world, and the torture others are suffering. As chapters pass Lily feels she

Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about.” (Kidd 148). In the book August told Lily about how bees live and how the queen bee lays eggs that become worker bees later on. This made Lily think about herself and her life living without a mother. She realized that the queen bee is like a mother to all the thousands of worker bees in the hive. This realization makes Lily understand that even though she didn’t grow up with her mother, doesn’t mean that she could not have a motherly figure to love her and take care of her like her mother would have. Along with the queen bee becoming a symbol of her mother, later in the story, Lily understands that the statue of Mary in the sisters home, also symbolizes a mother to thousands. Understanding this helps Lily accept and deal with the trauma of her mother's death and heal her unhealed

No one can go through life without other people having an impact on their existence. They may have an impact that can change us, for better or worse. In the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character, Lily, runs away from home and comes across many different people on her adventure. The characters that have the greatest impact on her are: T. Ray, her father; Rosaleen, her caretaker; and August, her catalyst for self-healing. Lily starts her life with her father, who is the dominant negative influence in her life. Lily loses her mother when she is only four years old. Her caretaker, Rosaleen, steps into her life as a maternal figure and exerts a positive impact over Lily. After running away from home, Lily, with Rosaleen,

Once Lily accepts what she has done and learns that her mother's death did not make her a bad person, her conflict can finally be resolved. As a result of resolving her conflict, she is able to mature because of the struggle, just like other people are able to grow and evolve from their own mistakes. This is evident when she admits "Before coming here, my whole life had been nothing but a hole where my mother should have been, and this hole had made me different, left me always aching for something, but never once did I think what he'd lost or how it might've changed him" (Kidd 293). Lily finally realizes that her mother's death has not only affected her, but also her father, T. Ray, and the calendar sisters. Through the course of Lily's struggle, Lily learns a lot about life and matures into a wiser