The Secret River

Author Sue Monk Kidd was raised in a small town named Sylvester, Georgia, a town that had a deep influence in the writing of her first novel The Secret Life of Bees. She went to school and graduated from Texas Christian University in 1970 and after took creative writing courses at Emory University and Anderson College, as well as studying at Sewanee, Bread Loaf, and along with going to many writer’s conferences throughout the years. This book is a coming of age fiction book. a coming of age book…

Throughout the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd sends the main character, Lily, on a journey to better understand where her mother came from. Lily was raised from an early age strictly by T. Ray, her father, who does not have a good or close relationship with her at all. Although T. Ray is only directly with Lily at the beginning and end of the novel, he affects Lily throughout the whole story. Kidd communicates that all people love differently by choosing to use T. Ray as both an…

walls and tried to enter through the cracks. Sue’s mother was always cleaning up wads of honey that they left over on the floors. The constant sounds of buzzing made it feel like home (Cloud). This situation influenced the writing of her book, The Secret Life of Bees, as the main character Lily also grew up in a tiny southern house that was infested by bees. Lily tried to learn from the bees and use them to heal her losses,…

Secret Life of Bees Theme “People, in general, would rather die than forgive.” (Kidd 277) Though it might sound morbid, Sue Monk Kidd states the grim reality through a revelation of Lily Owens, the main character in her novel, The Secret Life of Bees. Lily must learn to receive and offer forgiveness as she matures throughout the novel, but as in all situations (and especially in her’s), forgiving is not easy. Growing up with her father, T. Ray, Lily has been the victim of abuse and negligence.…

and set herself free from her abusive past with her father, but Lily did not take the journey by herself. The honeybees of Tiburon, South Carolina showed Lily a new path to take. The bees have a great impact on Lily’s new life. In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the bees symbolize Lily in several ways. First, other worker bees do not know much about the queen; just as Lily does not know about her mother. The queen bee always stays in the hive and hides from other…

Bill Watterson once said, "There's no problem so awful, that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse." In each of our lives, we encounter problems that cause us pain or make mistakes that burden us with guilt. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd shows us someone who suffers a tremendous loss at her own fault. The protagonist, fourteen year old Lily Owens, accidentally shoots and kills her mother as a small child, causing her to loathe herself. Lily must face the…

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 temperature and people were surrounded by oppression. During this humid summer a girl named Lily Owens runs away from her abusive father T. Ray, in search of her mother's past and the truth behind her death. After a…

August had treated Lily like a daughter loving her, caring for her, and giving her only the best that August herself could give. Lily wanted to please August and keep everything about her life with T-Ray a secret. Lily confessed everything about her life and Deborah and August confessed everything she knew about Deborah including how Lily’s “mother had left [her]” (Kidd 261). Lily looked to August for comfort and when she expressed her anger towards August…

1960s, particularly in the southern United States. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, a young white girl named Lily, is motherless and lives without a strong feminine role in her life. She is taken under the wing of the Boatwright sisters, three charismatic African-American women. With them, Lily learns strength and confidence, allowing her to grow into an influential woman in the world, despite everyone working against her. The Secret Life of Bees explores the empowerment of women…

Description and evolution of Clover: Clover is a motherly mare approaching middle life. She is loyal and maternal with every single animals living on the farm. She takes care of them. For example, at the beginning of the book, at Old Major’s speech, (p.1 and p.2) she made a wall around the ducklings that had lost their mother with her foreleg to keep them warm and they feel asleep. Unfortunately, she is not good with words and reading is a real problem for her out throughout the book. At…