“The gun on the floor. Bending to pick it up. The noise that exploded around us. This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted. And I took her away.”(Kidd 8) Lily has had a rough start to her life with her father being abusive and neglecting to her and not to mention her shooting and killing her mom on accident. Lily had lost so much, but gained a great deal of parental figures when she and Rosaleen escape off to Tiburon. There they find August Boatwright and Lily’s life changes. In the book “The Secret Life Of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd, the author establishes a theme of gain from loss when Lily suffers the loss her mom and dealing with an abusive father that lead her to find a new family of Rosaleen and the Boatwright family.
Lily's loss of her mom provided guidance to where she is now. “It looked to me like somebody had cut the black Mary’s picture from a book glued it onto a sanded piece of wood about two inches across, and varnished it. On the back an unknown hand had written ‘Tiburon, S.C.’.”(Kidd 14) Although losing her mom was a great tragedy it led her to where she is now and where she found the Boatwright family. Killing her mom was the only way she would have found the picture of the black Mary with Tiburon, S.C. on the back.
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“This is the moment I remember clearest of all how I stood in the driveway looking back at them. I remember the sight of them standing there waiting. All these women, all this love, waiting.”(Kidd 299) Although Lily did suffer a great loss from losing her mom, she gained so much more with the love and support that the Boatwrights and their group gave her. She has gained friends, someone to look up to, and the sense of family from all of them. Without the loss of her mom and the abuse of her dad she would never of gotten the experience of such powerful female role models and a new
Lily had given up, she lived her entire life with the idea that her mother
Lily’s idolization of her mother is shown in how she describes Deborah’s belongings. A photo, which she see’s her mother's beautiful, gloves that Lily holds as if it were actually hers, and a photo of the black Mary which she keeps close. Right before Lily finds out T. Ray was right in saying Deborah left them Lily says she never believed him and she wants to prove him wrong. Characters with flaws are a lot more sympathetic and likeable to the reader instead of the perfect flawless unrealistic ones. Kidd got the reader to understand these flaws with how August tried to explain the situation to Lily, “All she did was cry for a week.
In hopes of discovering more about her mother, Lily travels to Tiburon but unexpectedly develops a maternal relationship with August, ultimately compelling her to lie about her identity and purpose in Tiburon because “[She] love this place with [her] whole heart” (225), and is certain that this is the life she wants.
Lily leaves the person who makes her life miserable, her father, and finds a new family full of goodness and love. Her desertion of the old life she had lets her have happiness. It is not too often that being rebellious and unlawful will lead to greater joy and a true family, but this novel illustrates the idea that there will be times when you must look at the big picture of life. In certain cases you will have to solve problems and follow your heart. You have to work at having a good life, and whatever is required to make that happen should be a
Her mother died when she was 4, and Lily was the one to kill her. Her dad, T-Ray, was a terrible parent to her too, because he hit her. She also have to live with the guilt that she ended her mother’s life. “There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful.” a quote by August, page 50.
“She was black as could be, twisted like driftwood from being out in the weather, her face a map of all the storms and journeys she’d been through. Her right arm was raised as if she was pointing the way, except her fingers were closed in a fist. It gave her a serious look, like she could straighten you out if necessary.” In this quotation, from the beginning of chapter four, Lily describes the black Mary statue.
Lily is the main character, and narrator of her story, through her interactions she gains an understanding
Lily remembers being very close to her mother, and Lily was only four years old when her mother died. Lily was really depressed and mad at herself because she knew that she was the reason that her mother died. This quote states that “Lily is sustained by her wit and latent strength of character but at the same time by a profound need to make sense of powerful and confusing memories concerning her mother, Deborah, who died when she was four years old”(Monk Kidd). Years later when she was working in the peach stand, T-Ray came out and told her that she didn’t kill her mother but that her mother ran away and abandoned her. Lily says that “I lay in bed and thought about dying and going to be with my mother in paradise.
When children dont have trust with their parents they turn to their peer which is not always a good idea. Sometimes its a good idea to turn to adults who might help us or give us advice because adults already have experience. T. Ray does not help his daughter because in the book we see him as a cruel father who he dont even know what Lily needs and a father who misinterpret his daughter just because the daughter went outside the house, he immediately thought that she was with a guy. In the book Sue Monk Kidd gives us an example of Lily feeling better with August Boatwright because she is the only woman who can listen to her and helps her is she needs help not like T. Ray ignoring her and not taking care of her, Mr. Owens you would be doing Lily and the rest of us a favor by leaving
Continuing, another theme that led us through Lily’s adventure of growing up was her discovering how important storytelling was. She was going through gruesome horrid things, and when she read things like Shakespeare she realized how important it was because it helped her escape to a fantasy world for a little bit of time. Lastly, Lily learns the power of the female community. Lily grew up without a mother, so for a large chunk of her life she didn’t know the real power the female community held.
Lily barely knew her own mother, and T. Ray, her father, abuses her and could care less. Lily gets to experience the parent-child love from Rosaleen. Kidd asserts that the interaction between different races can lead to loving
Throughout The Secret Life of Bees bees play a recurring role in the novel, repeatably being mentioned during the novel in epigrams before the start of each chapter and within the story itself. Unfortunately, on certain occasions the reason why bees are included in a certain part of the story can be unclear and confusing to readers, causing them to occasionally misinterpret the importance of bees throughout the novel. Regardless, the bees throughout play a very important role in understanding many of the themes and symbolism that Kidd included within the novel. In The Secret Life of Bees Kidd symbolizes Lily’s experiences and situations through the bees frequently present in the novel to show that seemingly different things can function in the same way.
The one person that was mainly influenced by this tragedy would be Lily because she had to suffer the pain of growing up without a
Throughout various events in the book it is clear that Lily is struggling to accept her mother’s death, and to accept the unbearable past. All through her life Lily felt unlovable from her father and herself because of what she did to her mother. Lily believes she doesn’t deserve love from anyone. Although gradually and naturally Lily soon begins to feel warmth of love from herself, August, Rosaleen, and even from Zach. Furthermore Lily learns a valuable lesson about the human nature in the end of chapter twelve, that all humans make mistakes, thats what makes so human.
At the end of the novel, it’s when Lily realizes that she actually does have a mother. Even though she lost her biological mother, she found new motherly figures. The figures came in the Daughter of Mary, August, and even Rosaleen. The whole story itself was centered around Lily trying to find more information on her mother before she died. She was able to find that information, along with new motherly figures.