The Secret Life of Bees

In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens can be best described as brave. This can be seen in the book when she stands up to T. Ray. Lily accidentally killed her mother with a gun that was dropped on the ground by her mother. Lily never had a mother since then and T. Ray has not been the father he would have been since then. T. Ray has pushed Lily finally pushing her to her breaking point. Lily had her breaking point when T. Ray told her her mother ran away. On page 38, the author…

In more than one way, Lily and Zach’s relationship resembles the Loving’s. The Loving’s were an interracial couple, that were told they couldn’t be together because of this reason. In “The Secret Life of Bees”, Lily is falling for a boy named Zach. There’s only one problem…. Zach isn’t like the boys that Lily “should” be falling in love with… Zach is African American. Lily knows this, but isn’t sure what to do, because of her predicament. She doesn’t know how to explain it. I know this because…

Lily’s Philosophy of Life In the beginning of the novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens writes a paper called, “My Philosophy of Life.” But, her philosophy of life changes dramatically throughout the course of the novel. Lily’s early philosophy of life was influenced greatly by her father, T. Ray. When she is introduced to the Boatwright family, however, her perspective on many of the things that she got from her father and society changed. Some of these philosophies…

In the novel Secret Life of Bees, the bee represents the mother figure. As the story progresses the bee goes from representing Lily’s mother to August who takes care of Lily, but ultimately it illustrates a caring “mother” who is affectionate and tends to Lily like her own. Throughout the novel Lily longs for a person in her life to take care of her and do all the things mothers do. From the beginning of the novel she says how you could tell at school which kids had moms and which did not. Lily…

emotional abuse is made to look normal or not as damaging as it truly is. Relationships between characters or people in real life are idolized without people fully understanding how toxic they are. Emotional abuse is too frequently downplayed and not seen as an issue because of the tangible evidence of other kinds of abuse such as physical. However, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd portrays how damaging emotional, psychological, or verbal abuse can be, especially in children. Emotional…

quote by Jerry Bridges, “practice of true community involves responsibilities and actions that do not come naturally to us,” can convey that community is something that has to be earned by trust and respect and not only by willingness. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the novel takes place in the mid-1960’s, where the protagonist Lily is living with T-Ray, her emotionally and physically abusive father, and Rosaleen, an African American housekeeper who was seen as a mother figure, as…

realization that they had the power to control their lives: that they need not follow the advice of their fathers, brothers, spouses, or any other man. This, of course, lead to a glowing generation of female empowerment. The leading ladies in The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, contributed to a more progressive society by embodying modern day feminism. Using both the Boatwright sisters and the Owens women, Kidd illustrated how women during this time were not solely focused on becoming…

Which character in the novel does Kidd make you particularly admire, and for what reasons? Support your answer by close reference to the prose. While I was reading this book called “The Secret Life of Bees”, written by Sue Monk Kidd, I noticed that most of the characters in this book were not that good and did really bad things during the story. Obviously, there were some characters in the story that were actually really good persons, and kind to people, and one of this characters is Neil. I…

In Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper, the main character Melody Brooks was born with bilateral quadriplegia, also known as cerebral palsy, disabling her from being able to talk, walk, feed herself, and much more. Throughout the story, there is symbolism to help us understand what Melody goes through daily. A big symbol in the book is Ollie, Melody’s goldfish. Ollie was always stuck swimming circles in his bowl, reminds us of the way Melody is stuck with her body. She has no way of escaping…

interviewed for a job, we are all put into situations that require courage every day. Therefore, we should face situations with courage. First, we should face situations with courage because we gain initiative under pressure. In the book The Secret Life of Bees, we see many different times when people gain initiative from the courage they have in pressured situations. One example of this is when Lily uses her courage to break Rosaleen out of the hospital. “I stood there a couple of minutes,…