Mary Sue

when she’s in Pleasantville, Skip calls her smart. This can be seen when Jennifer’s in class and they’re learning about the only two existing streets in Pleasantville. Jennifer raises her hand and asks “What’s outside of Pleasantville?” This shows that Jennifer is actually curious and genuinely wants to know what’s outside of Pleasantville because it doesn’t make sense to her. Another example would be when Jennifer starts reading books and starts going to the library free willingly. One day David walked into her room and she was reading a book and she genuinely liked it because it was about something she enjoyed. Also, when she puts on the glasses at her table, she looks at the picture of Mary Sue and realizes she looks like her. This shows that she’s slowly starting to become like Mary Sue personality wise and even making better choices. Similarly, when she decides to stay in Pleasantville for college while David decides to go back home to his mom.…

Amber Sand, an unpopular teenager who happens to have a popular-as-heck boyfriend. To be honest, I didn’t think much of her at first, believing her to be a childish portrayal of a teenager. To be honest, I thought the entire book was childish (except the profanity...) and perhaps the book may have been better as a Juvenile Reader book. But that’s for another time. Anyway, the features that first stood out to me were her inherent brattiness and complaining personality, and of course, the fact…

In Sue Grafton’s The Parker Shotgun, Jackie and Bill Barnett exhibit covetous behavior for the highly-sought-after Parker shotgun that Kinsey Millhone recognizes to identify the culprit of Rudd’s murder, thus indicating that excessive acquisitiveness often triggers unpredictable, heartless actions. In Kinsey’s first encounter with Jackie, Jackie discloses that she had a miserable marriage with Bill due to the fact that his extravagant promises to her were lies. Kinsey meets Jackie in Jackie’s…

fearless and unemotional men who are good fighters, and gunmen with ‘slick mouths’. The private investigator tradition has slightly deviated since its introduction during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Women have transitioned from being femme fatales to intelligent, strong private investigators. Rex Stout introduced the first female private eye in 1937 but it was not until the 1970’s that female writers such as P.D James, Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, Liza Cody, Karen Kijewski, Carolina…

When looking through book titles, somehow people’s eyes just jump to a specific title without any rhyme or reason. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd was the title that jumped out at me. I knew that there is no way that the book is actually about the lives of bees. I wanted to find out what it really meant. I read that it was set in South Carolina and was about a 14 year-old girl named Lily. So I thought that I could comprehend it easily from a voice of a girl around my age. I could relate…

(TS) In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees, August Boatwright helps reunite her sisters and her community by using the faith in the Black Madonna as a way to improve the quality of their lives. (PS) The faith within the Black Madonna improved Lily Owens’ and the Boatwright’s lives because they had to find a spiritual mother within themselves. (SS) Since August practiced the philosophy of the Black Madonna, she tells Lily, “You have to find a mother inside yourself” (Kidd 288). (SS)…

Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees is an exemplary novel which reveals the racism, sexism, and overall discrimination that unfolded in the south. The Secret Life of Bees transports the reader to the year of 1964 in South Carolina, where racial tensions were almost as high as the temperatures and people were surrounded by oppression. During this humid summer a young girl named Lily Owens runs away from her abusive father T. Ray, in search of her mother's past and the truth behind her tragic…

Sue Monk Kidd’s coming of age novel The Secret Life of Bees has many themes, a major one being that women are powerful. There is no lack of female characters, and each is strong in their own way, and as a community they are an incredible force, something the protagonist Lily comes to realize over the course of the story. In the opening of this story, Lily is in a society where women are not highly valued. This is implied through the times; the sixties wasn’t exactly known for the best…

Sue Monk Kidd adopts many themes and uses many symbols throughout the book "The Secret Life of Bees." The book takes place in the 1960 's. During this time, the fight for Civil Rights was taking place, so racism played a role in the book. The main themes that developed were female power, prejudice, and forgiveness. The main symbols used were the bees, the black Mary, and the whale pin along with the photograph. During this time period, women did not have a say in much at all. Female power was…

Most people form impressions based on the race of a person. Do you? The Secret Life of Bees is a story of a fourteen-year-old girl who runs away from her mean and unloving father to find information about her mother's past. Lily and her housekeeper, Rosaleen, stay with the Boatwright sisters, three African American beekeepers. The setting takes place in South Carolina in 1964, a time when racism was provoked by the civil rights movement and often times turned violent. In the novel, Sue Monk Kidd…