The Secret Life of Bees Essay - 1062 Words

The Secret Life of Bees A family is a basic social unit consisting of parents and children. It is considered a group of people where one can look to for acceptance, safety, happiness and love. Families are the foundation to a human beings life because it is where one can be welcomes into the society. Individuals are nurtured and given tools so they are capable of learning and experiencing the world. Living in an unhealthy environment may impact the way someone thinks and acts physically and emotionally, in the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens, a young fourteen year old girl who lives in South Carolina, loses her mother at the age of four because of a devastating tragedy leading to her†¦show more content†¦In a matter of seconds, I knew exactly what I had to do- leave† (Kidd, 41) When Lily can no longer handle her harsh, unyielding father she decides to run away. T.Ray and Lily have a fight and T.Ray bluntly tells Lily, â€Å"The truth is, you r sorry mother ran off and left you. The day she dies, she’d come back to get her things, that’s all.† (Kidd, 39) In that moment it causes Lily to be very confused and makes her feel unimportant and unloved. â€Å"Some things were not possible in this world. Children did not have two parents who refused to love them. One, maybe, but for pity’s sake, not two.† (Kidd, 41) When Lily hears the truth about her mother did, she is outraged by this statement and she runs away. Lily writes a note to T.ray telling him not to bother looking for her. She decides to sneak Rosaleen out of the hospital before she returns to the jail and they run off to Tiburon, South Carolina. Lily hates her father and with the choices she makes, in a matter of time, Lily is forced to be responsible for herself and Rosaleen, she must learn how to be independent. Lily and Rosaleen will take a journey that will change their lives and shape their future forever. Lily who loses her mo ther at a very young age of four shapes her life around the indistinctive memory of her mother’s death. Lily has been profoundly affected by her own mother’s death; she believes that living with someone else’s death can be more painful than dying.Show MoreRelatedThe Secret Life of Bees Essay1209 Words   |  5 PagesThe Secret Life of Bees In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees there is a psychological allegory present, which is proven by the characters in the story. The psychological allegory is based on the theory by Sigmund Freud, this theory states that in the human brain there is three major psychological portions, the id, the ego, and the super ego. The id is the portion that induces selfishness and hatred and other â€Å"bad† actions, the super ego is the opposite of the id, putting othersRead MoreThe Secret Life of Bees Essay793 Words   |  4 PagesHannah Boyer Mr. O’Mara English IV; Period B 8/25/08 The Secret Life of Bees Bees, honey, the Black Madonna, the 1960’s, the power of women, what do all of these things have in common? All of these things are what one would think of when reading the book, The Secret Life of Bees. Those who have read The Secret Life of Bees know that it is not a book about different kinds of bees and how bees live their lives, but it is a book about a poorly treated girl named Lily who runs away fromRead MoreThe Secret Life Of Bees Themes Essay1585 Words   |  7 PagesThe Civil Right Act occurred in 1960 which allowed African-Americans more rights. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees many characters challenges and uncover the meaning of accepting taboo ideas. 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She thought her life would be better but felt lost roaming around the streets. After years of roaming around, she went back to the convent and Mary had been standing in for her all this time. I believe August tells Lily about Beatrix the nun not only to make Lily trustRead MoreThe Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Essay896 Words   |  4 PagesRacism: Then and Now. 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- 1960s not only by using beautiful language, but very thoroughly developed plot and character development. KiddRead MoreKitchen By Banana Yoshimoto And The Secret Life Of Bees Analysis1375 Words   |  6 Pagesstory cooperate to create. Without centralized topic, a story contains just discretionary occasions and characters. In both Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd readers view the ideas of death and emptiness, as well as the effects of being nurtured by someone different from mothers. Furthermore, in this essay readers will look more into these themes and compare and contrast them with each other and with the views of readers like you and me. Mahoko Yoshimoto, knownRead MoreTo Kill a Mockingbird Essay892 Words   |  4 PagesMockingbird Essay The Dictionary defines prejudice as, â€Å"an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.† There has been prejudice known throughout history, mostly against the blacks during and before the time of Martin Luther King Jr. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee there is clear evidence of prejudice against the blacks. In both of these novels, the readers are shown that Rosaleen Daise (The Secret LifeRead MoreSue Monk Kidd : A Memory Of The Past1633 Words   |  7 Pageswrite her novel The Secret Life of Bees by the dreadful experiences she faced during her childhood, an early passion of literature, and finally her exploration of religious beliefs. Her childhood was most notably affected in the summer of 1964, when she witnessed public cruelty to blacks that, no doubt, haunted her for the rest of her life. Clearly, her first hand experiences that summer played an important role of setting it as a Civil Rights backdrop in The Secret Life of Bees. Sue Monk Kidd’s dreadful