The Secret Life Of Bees Essay

Words: 1201
Pages: 5

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a realistic fiction novel that explains how a teenage girl, Lily, travels through a world filled with racism. Throughout the novel, Lily lives in a society where everyone around her dislikes the African-American race; including her father, T-Ray, who she hates. Lily decides to escape this horrible society and meet up a with a someone, which she did not know at the beginning, was a close friend of her mother's. In the end of the novel, Lily is found by her hated father but refuses to return to her old life in Tiburon where she is not cared for; Lily eventually convinces her father to let her stay in Tiburon with her new family. Lily discovers how racism is bad and that the color of skin does not affect who we love, what we do, and where we can or cannot do; she realizes this through character’s actions, dialogue, and events in the plot.
During the course of the work, Lily encounters many problems with racism because she is usually with an African-American. When Lily leaves home, her plan to get to get to
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Lily witnesses the unfair treatment of African-Americans throughout the novel, in fact, she herself had been “brainwashed” to act and think against African-Americans once in awhile. Most of the racism in the book is by word of mouth because almost every time a racist comment is made, it is used to make fun of an African-American. Finally, many events that occurred throughout the novel brought out the theme of racism ranging from Rosaleen getting beaten to something as small as Lily’s talk with a secretary. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a realistic fiction novel that teaches a girl, Lily, how to respect the African-American culture, making her think of them the same tas how she thinks of