The Secret Life of Bees: Exploring Family Relations

The Secret Life of Bees has a lot of problems around the topic family relations. Family sucks but if you meet new people it could get better. Lily’s (the main character) family life is atrocious, her mother died when she was four, and her father (T. Ray is abusive. Lily has a nanny named Rosaleen, she was Lily’s first friend and has been working in the fields for Lily’s father T. Ray, but was assigned to take care of Lily; 6 months after Lily’s mom died.

Lily’s relationship with her dad is very bitter, after her mom died T. Ray grew resentful and abusive. He would make Lily kneel on grits until her knees bleed, and would bully Lily about trying to better her reading. Later in the novel Lily runs away with Rosaleen to a small town named Tiburon. This town was on the back of her mother’s black Mary photo. T. Ray gets furious and starts looking for them. Throughout this novel T. Ray’s relationship with Lily does not improve, but Lily comes to understand why her father feels this way.

There were so many people Lily has met in Tiburon, August welcomed Rosaleen and Lily into her home when they arrive. She has a pink house and lives with her two sisters May and June. The three sisters are known as the calendar sisters. August works at a honey plant and makes enough to take care of her two sisters. May, June, and August, are in the place of Lily’s mother in this town and come to realis that they love her. May kills herself in a river, but tells her sisters to live life to the fullest, this affects Lily in a bad way.

Zack is Lily’s best friend but they also like each other, Zack keeps on giving gifts to Lily and good attention. Zack and Lily where hesitant of having the feeling of black and white loving each other, but they got to know each other and fell in love. Lily’s mother Deborah was the puzzle piece keeping the Owens family together, after she dies it all fell apart.

Lastly a bad situation can always be turned good if the right people lead you on, and the journey that Lily went on to find happiness again was intense, but resulted in a new family that cared about her even more than her old one. Lily lives on August’s farm helping out and is settling down with her new friends and family.