Topics for Further Study
Last Updated September 25, 2024.
- Every chapter in the novel opens with a quote or quotes about bees and beekeeping. Choose a chapter and discuss how the initial quotes connect to the events within that chapter. Identify the character you believe represents the "queen bee" and explain your reasoning.
- The novel includes numerous references to actual events from 1964, the year the story takes place. Select one of these references and create a news report for the class, similar to the ones the characters watch in the novel, detailing the event that occurred.
- Zach and Lily vow that they will be together someday. Write a scene depicting them meeting today in their sixties. Would they still end up together? Would the social conventions that once kept them apart continue to do so today?
- Find another creative work—a novel, story, movie, poem, or painting—that features bees. What do the bees symbolize in that work? Describe three ways in which the symbolism of bees in the work you found is similar to or different from their symbolism in Kidd's novel.
- May's wailing wall behind the Boatwright house helps her manage her life's traumas and general emotional struggles. The Boatwright sisters also have daily prayers and weekly services before Our Lady of Chains as significant rituals in their home. What are some examples of rituals, religious or otherwise, in your own home? What purposes do they serve? Write a scene describing your family participating in these rituals.
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