An Analysis of The Secret Life of Bees by: Angelina Thai

 An Analysis of The Secret Life of Bees

by: Angelina Thai

Love is a strong bond between people. The relationship between a mother and child is

one of the strongest bonds between two people. When a parent passes away, the bond is cut and

there will be a hole in the child's life. In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd,

Lily faces an internal conflict of belonging and feeling loved after the death of her mother and

this impacts her as it pushes her to find a community where she feels accepted and loved and she

changes by coming to terms with her mothers death.

Lily feels no sense of love and warmth when living with her father, T-Ray, in Sylvan. He

is an abusive father who punishes her often by making her kneel on grits and he is so unfather

like that Lily calls him T-Ray “because ‘Daddy’ never fit him” (Kidd 2). Lily struggles to feel

accepted by the community. She is excluded in school and at home her T-Ray treats her badly.

This prompts her to leave Sylvan and find a community where she feels accepted and loved

which helps her create a life for herself. Lily runs away to Tiburon and meets the Boatwright

sisters and becomes friends with a guy named Zach. Lily struggles to find a place there so she

lies to the sisters and tells them that “‘my mother died when I was little, and then my father died

in a tractor accident last month on our farm in Spartanburg County. I don’t know any other kin

around here, so they were going to send me to a home’” because she wants to stay there

desperately (73). The sisters allow Lily to stay there and after a few months, Lily feels

comfortable and happy there. The Boatwright sisters and Lily become very close and when

T-Ray tries to take Lily back home, August says “‘Mr. Owens, you would be doing Lily and the

rest of us a favor by leaving her here. I made her my apprentice beekeeper, and she’s learning

the whole business and helping us out with all her hard work. We love Lily, and we’ll take care

of her, I promise you that. We’ll start her in school here and keep her straight’” (298). Lily is

accepted into the community despite her being a different race and she learns a lot by being a

beekeeper. She gets enrolled in school and starts to pursue her dreams of being a writer. At the

end of the novel, her desire to be loved is fulfilled by the community she has at Tiburon.

Lily has always felt guilt for killing her mother when she was four years old. After

T-Ray tells her that her mother left her, Lily goes on a journey to discover the truth about her

mother. While on her journey of discovery, Lily changes by coming to terms with her mothers

death as she learns more about her. Lily learns that her mother ran away from her when she was

younger because she was depressed. She did not have a good relationship with T-Ray and

needed to get away; however, she came back and that was when Lily accidentally killed her.

Lily feels overwhelmed with emotions after learning the truth and picks “up one of the honey

jars and hurls it as hard as [she] could” (259). She takes her anger out by breaking may things in

the honey house and when she stops she “felt a powerful sadness, not because of what [she’d]

done, as bad as that it, but because everything seemed emptied out-the feelings [she’d] had for

her, the things [she’d] believed, all those stories about her [she’d] lived off of like they were food

and water and air” (260). Lily is angry at first because her beliefs about what her mother was

actually like is ruined; however, Lily realizes that her mother is dead and there is nothing she can

do to change what her mother did and the fact that she killed her. She accepts the truth and

searches for closure which is why she asks T-Ray “‘That day my mother died, you said when I

picked up the gun, it went off... I need to know... Did I do it?’” (299). Lily needs to confirm her

beliefs on whether she killed her mother or not so she can move on from her death.

Lily’s journey to Tiburon was to learn more about her mother and to find a place where

she feels she belongs. The internal conflict she faces of belonging and feeling loved after the

death of her mother sets off her journey to Tiburon. All Lily desires in life is to feel loved and

after her mother’s death, she feels guilt and loneliness, prompting her to search for comfort and

love by running away from Sylvan. Throughout the entire novel, Lily was grieving for her

mothers death and trying to overcome all her feelings of guilt and hate. By living in Tiburon,

Lily is able to move on and finally find closure and acceptance in a community.