The Secret Life of Bees

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The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a story of a young girl trying to find her identity in the midst of racism and segregation. Lily is a white teenager that runs away from home and finds solace at a bee farm with three sisters. We follow Lily through various struggles as we see her mature into the person she becomes at the end of the novel, finding her happy place with the bees. One of my favorite parts of the book as a whole was the extensive amount of symbolism in the story. It wasn’t one of the stories where you had to pick out the symbolism, but here it was extremely obvious. The author chose to open each chapter with a reference to bees that we can somehow relate it back to the protagonist.
The bees in the novel served as Lily’s guides in the novel. We see them talked about from the very beginning when they came out from behind the walls and she tried to wake up T. Ray to see them. It’s almost as if the bees were encouraging to leave the house and eventually led her to find the truth about her mother. Later when she goes to Tiburon, keeping the bees becomes her occupation. Bees symbolized her personal growth and exploration and helped lily move forward in her situation. For every important action that happens in the story, there is always a time where bees play a role. For example, when she realized she loved August, she let the bees rest on her body. She even finds the life of the bees similar to her own life. They care for their mother, continue working, and work unbelievably hard to service. They allow Lily to understand the power of community. 
Kidd does an excellent job in portraying the life of bees and comparing it to the life of Lily. I think this book would be excellent to teach in the classroom because of the extensive amount of symbolism. There is plenty of information to dig into and its also just an innocent fun read! 

            

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 25, 2017 at 8:28 PM

    Yes, great post. The Bees helped Lily make the decision to leave and get away from T.Ray, and kept her fed,occupied, and employed. Bees are life.

    ReplyDelete

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