The Secret Life Of Bees Movie And Book Comparison Essay

It has been asked a million times: is the book or the movie better? In rare circumstances, the movie can be picked but more commonly people swear by the book. ‘The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd has not escaped that question, and the answer may vary since both forms of it do have their bonuses. But one version stands out in the way it tells the story, the experience it gives the reader/watcher, and the clarity in which the moral of the story is portrayed. The book gives its readers such a unique and impacting experience, but the movie seems to lack when it comes to that. The core discovery that Lily makes in the book, is that she can be her own strength. She doesn’t always need her mother there to help her, she doesn’t have to wish her father would actually be there for her, and she doesn’t even need to rely on the Black Madonna statue to guide her; she can be strong without them. This defining revelation seems to get lost in the movie. The focus goes from finding her own strength, to simply …show more content…
In the movie she learns of Zach’s arrest directly from his mother who is visiting the pink house, but in the book she answers the phone and the mother is on the other end crying. Also absent in the movie, but a huge part of the book, are the vigils for May and the long grieving process everyone goes through. The book version places a much larger impact on Mays death to the sisters, and lets the reader see the struggles they all go through because of it. One part of May’s death does make more sense in the movie version though, and that would be how Zach is arrested. In the book they know he is in the prison and can even visit him, but in the movie nobody knows where he has been taken or even if he’s alive. The stress the movie version causes would certainly push May to commit suicide, but the book version doesn’t seem as desperate of a