What does narrator Lily allude to about bees in chapter 1 of The Secret Life of Bees?
Each chapter of The Secret Life of Bees begins with an epigram from a text about bees. Before chapter 1, it reads:
The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness. –Man and Insects
This is allusion, of course, to Lilly's mom's death. In chapter 1 we learn how Lily shot her mother when she was four and, since then, has lived a "queenless" childhood, with no "unifying force" or feminine community.
As a "worker," Lilly has sensed her absence, going out to the peach orchard often to sift through her old shoebox full of memories. Since T. Ray gives not sense of direction in her life, the entire book serves as Lily's desire to find a surrogate mother. At the Boatright house, she finds three and the secret to her mother's past.
What Biblical allusion does Lily make when the bees cover her in chapter 8 of The Secret Life of Bees?
In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character Lily is a girl growing up in the American South. Lily lives a life of isolation and ostracism from her community growing up because of fact that her mother died when she was young—leaving her without a feminine example or connection to the community. Lily’s father T. Ray is both unlearned and abusive—physically and emotionally antagonizing Lily during her time at her childhood home.
Chapter 8 takes place once Lily has run away from home. She is finding a new life on the bee farm of the Boatwrights. In chapter 8 when Lily is being introduced to the religion of the Boatwrights and their devotion to the bees, she experiences the idea of the bees being a type of love.
She makes the biblical allusion to the idea of Moses and the ten plagues, specifically the plague of locusts, a story from the tenth chapter of the Book of Exodus. In that passage, Moses is using the plagues, sent from Yahweh, to convince the Pharoh that it was more costly to keep the Israelites as slaves than to simply let them go. While covered in bees in chapter 8, she makes the connection between the plight of the Israelites and her own life,
Let my people go, Moses said. I’d seen the plague of locusts at the movies, the sky filled with hordes of insects looking like kamikaze planes. Back in my room on the peach farm, when the bees had first come out at night, I had imagined they were sent as a special plague for T. Ray. God saying, Let my daughter go . . . (chapter 8)
Like the Israelites, abused and used by the Pharoh—she had been abused and neglected by T. Ray, and like the plagues sent by God in the Old Testament it had been a plague of bees that was a sign for her that she was supposed to go. The symbolism of the bees, as icons of female empowerment and motherhood, goes further in setting her free as they eventually help her to heal in a way that T. Ray could never help her.
That allusion, to Moses and the plagues, shows Lily’s religious thinking about the bees and her journey from home. If her bees are sent by God in the same way that the plagues of Egypt, it means that Lily is, in her mind, meant to be at the Boatwrights’ and the idea of divine ordination of her escape adds a layer of religious significance to her story. Thinking that God, whoever that is, sent the bees to help her escape—helps her to see the value not only in the bees but the significance of her friendship with the women at the Boatwright house.
What Biblical allusion does Lily make when the bees cover her in chapter 8 of The Secret Life of Bees?
The allusion comes on page 151 with the mention of "God," "Moses," and the "plagues." The meaning of the allusion is directly explained in the text, so I encourage you to find it, read it, and see what you get out of it.
The background information necessary to understanding this allusion is that it is a direct reference to the Exodus story of Moses leading the Egyptians out of slavery in Egypt. God sent 10 plagues on Pharoah and his people, one of which included swarms of locusts. Additionally, a key quote from the story (well known from movies and songs, not just the Biblical story) is "Let my people go." Lily, here, remembers the first night the bees came into her room. She thought of them then like a plague that God had sent to her father, as if to say, "Let Lily go."
Here at August's house, however, she is finally free. Consider the difference these bees hold for her now, as opposed to the first encounter she had with them.
What does Lily compare the bees to in The Secret Life of Bees?
Over the course of the novel, Lily compares the bees, their society, and their work to various aspects of her own life. Even in the first chapter, the influence of bees is clear:
The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.
This is the chapter when the reader learns that Lily may have accidentally killed her mother when she was very young. She isn't clear, and her memories are blurry, but she has lost her "queen," the one who was the unifying force of her life. In her mother's absence, she is left to T. Ray's abuse—the same abuse he doled out on her mother. So we see the implicit connection here of the queen bee's impact reflected in the loss of her mother at a young age.
In this same chapter, Lily finds a swarm of bees inside her room. When she leaves the room to get T. Ray, she finds that they have disappeared when she returns. She initially traps them in a glass jar as proof to T. Ray that she was telling the truth, but she releases them later, thinking that the bees would want and deserve their freedom. In chapter two, she faces the decision of leaving T. Ray in order to help Rosaleen and perhaps find a better life for herself as well. She finally realizes what to do by remembering her trapped bees:
But I had such a moment right then, standing in my own ordinary room. I heard a voice say, Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open.
Her freedom is wrapped up with the bees' freedom. She realizes that just as those bees didn't realize the freedom that awaited them when she removed the lid, she has a greater freedom awaiting her that is yet to be realized, as well.
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