Water In The Secret Life Of Bees

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There is no better known literary trope than the one that says that water means rebirth. The tired theme has been done throughout history so many times that it’s almost expected to show up at some point in any literature. But in the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, water has taken on multiple free-flowing ideas that actually challenge the reader past the basics. In the novel, a young white girl named Lily is searching for many things in her life; but mainly why her mother died so many years ago. After breaking her black caretaker Rosaleen out of prison, they flee their home of Sylvan County as well as Lily’s dirtbag father T-Ray, in the hope of finding answers in Tiburon, a place that holds some connection to her mother. In Tiburon, …show more content…
On their first night away from home, Lily and Rosaleen have an argument about their obligations to each other. Lily marches to the other riverbank to be on her own, away from Rosaleen. However after awhile she realizes how inane the whole situation is and tries to find Rosaleen. After they say their apologies, they are already drenched from running through the river so Lily “slides down till the water sealed over [her] head. [She] held [her] breath and listened to the scratch of the river against [her] ears, sinking as far as [she] could into that shimmering dark world” (56) that is forgiveness. After this the two start to be generally kinder to each other and more mindful of how the other feels, even if they never say it. This rebirth of their friendship starts a new stage of trust for the two, especially when they have to stick to a story while they stay with the Boatwrights. But once the truth is out, it needs to be talked about. When August tells Lily about the day her mother came to stay at the house to escape T-Ray, Lily feels betrayed that she would even think about abandoning her own daughter. But as August goes on, lily realizes just why it had to happen like it did, and she starts to forgive her mother, at least in her own mind. But as this conversation unfolds, “a damp fog rolled into the yard and settled over the porch. [And] a …show more content…
June has been hostile towards Lily since her arrival at their sanctuary and hasn’t given her an inch of leeway. But on one hot summer day, Rosaleen and May break out the sprinkler to have some fun. Upon hearing the nonsense going on outside her window, June comes down and demands that it stops. Lily wants to keep having fun and decides to turn the sprinkler on June. After wrestling for control, the two end up on the ground where “the wet ggrasses pressed down [and made] perfect depressions in the earth” (169) acting as a permanent reminder of what just happened. After they get up, June does the most out of character thing she could do and gives Lily a hug, finally closing the gap between the two. As an opposition to fighting though, water also serves as a calming agent, especially for May. During a worryingly bad episode, she gets whisked away by her sisters to the bathtub where “June scooped up handfuls of water and drizzled them slowly across May’s back. Her crying had eased off into sniffling” (89) almost instantly, showing just how magical water can be. But at no other time does water bring as much peace to May as it does when she commits suicide. In her suicide note that they find later, she says how she is “tired of carrying around the weight of the world” (210) on her shoulders and no longer wants the responsibility; even if the only one asking her to carry everyone was herself.
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