The Secret Life Of Bees *spoiler ALERTS*

   The Secret Life of Bees

Terri Thampan 804

    I have recently read the book. "The Secret Life of Bees" By Sue Monk Kidd, and it is a very deep and heartwarming book. The main character, Lily, is a girl who lost her mother when she was 4 years old. She wishes to escape from living with her semi-abusive father, and sees the chance when Rosaleen, the black woman who her father picked from his pickers (helpers) to take care of Lily, gets put in jail for spilling snuff juice over three of the most racist white men's shoes. Lily, has a picture that belonged to her mother, and goes to the address on the back of it. This leads her to the Pink House. There she meets the three sisters June, May, and August. With them, she learns more about her mother, matures, and finally gets over the tiny bit of racism even she harbors within herself.
    What's really great about this book is that you learn a lot from it. Lily, goes through many changes in her thinking, and how she perceives the world around her. In the beginning of the book, she harbored the feelings of superiority for being white. But it wasn't so much that it was noticeable, but it was a little bit that even she wasn't aware of. When she met, the month sisters as I like to call them, or June, August, and May, she started to realize she did have these feelings inside of her. This made her ashamed, as she thought that August was a really knowledgeable woman,   but before she met August, somewhere inside her, she thought that Black women could be smart, but not as smart as her because she was white. She also falls in love with a black boy, and starts to think of people not by race or color, but without those things, slowly starting to think that such things don't matter.
    Another thing I really like about the story was, it isn't just all "Everything's going to be all right" type of story. Lily, had to work hard to make June like her. June disliked Lily for being white, which gave Lily some insight that it wasn't just white people disliking black people, but also it's later revealed that June didn't like Lily's mom because August used to work as Lily's mom's nanny.
     Also, you have a character like May. May is a very kindhearted woman. Everything that's bad that happens in the world, and May hears about it, it feels to her that it personally happens to her. It's also made known that May had a twin sister named April, who committed suicide. In the book it says how whenever April felt something, May felt the same thing as well, and as soon as April died, it was like the whole world became April for May. What I found really sad and symbolic was that May also committed suicide. It was when she found out that Zach (The boy who Lily fell in love with, also August's godson) had been put in jail, and no one told her about it, did she go out and commit suicide.
      I found that really touching because, it was the same way her twin went out of this world. Like two twins, destined to share the same kind of fate, to end their life by suicide, I feel like, the wight of the world became too much for May, because no one should ever have to burden that. May is a character that tried, and it broke her so much, to hold the world on our own frail shoulders. It will kill us, just like it killed May. But we should really live our lives to the fullest, and try to correct the world, so there really isn't so much to shoulder. May gave the advice to her sisters in her suicide note, to keep on living and that it was her time to join her parents and twin up in heaven.
     What I sort of think in my reading was that T. Ray, Lily's dad, mixed up Lily with her mother, Deborah, whenever he saw her. Because, in the story, Deborah tried to leave T. Ray, because his attitude towards her started changing more. I feel like, he started getting a bit more violent with her to get her to stay with him, because even though Deborah was falling out of love with him, T.Ray was still in love with her, and didn't want her to leave him. I eel like, because she left him already, T. Ray didn't want to take that chance with Lily, the only thing he had left of his wife. He treated Lily the opposite he treated Deborah (Which was Princess like for Deborah) as if he was scared that if he treated her like her mother, she too would walk all over him and leave him. I'm not trying to justify him, but understand his character a bit more, how he treated Lily was bad. He also says, "You're not leaving me again Deborah!" to Lily when she tells him she wants to stay with the month sisters. I heard that sometimes, parents mistake their own child for the deceased spouses. I feel bad for these kids, because half the time, the parent may treat them like the spouse, or differently, which can make them uncomfortable.
      The biggest thing that happened in the story was how Lily's thoughts on her mother changed. In the beginning, she was like the dream mother, the one who was prefect in every way. But then, nearing the end of the book, she finds out that her mother left her with her father, when she ran away from them. Her mental image of her mother started to change. No matter that her mother was depressed, she had abandoned her. It made Lily see her mother as something else than what she had thought. Gone was the woman who was perfect. What I really liked, was that she started to see her mother as she truly was, a human. And humans make mistakes. The thing is, her mother tried to fix her mistakes, by going back or Lily, but unfortunately, she died from the gun exploding by accident (Lily tried to give it to her mom, but the gun went off) before she could take Lily with her. I feel like, people when they think of their deceased parents, they sort of paint them out to be perfect. Harry, in Harry Potter, has this amazing mental image of his parents, but he finds out that when his dad was a kid, he used to bully others. This shattered his image of his dad, but he learned to accept that his dad had grew up from the child he once was.
   This book gives you so much from it. It only takes some time to look for the lessons.