"The Secret Life of Bees"

Paper Summary:

This paper relates that, throughout "The Secret Life of Bees", the life of the protagonist Lilly makes many transformations as she learns more about her past and thinks about the future to come. The United States is also transforming as a result of the painful happenings of the 1960s, such as President Kennedy's assassination and the important and historic events leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Acts. The author points out that Lilly realizes, for the first time in her life, "just how much importance the world had ascribed to skin pigment, how lately it seemed that skin pigment was the sun and everything else in the universe was the orbiting planets." The paper reveals that, at the end of the book, when Rosaleen comes home after finally succeeding as a certified voter, she proudly talks about how she will cast her vote for President Johnson and Hubert Humphrey; she has achieved one of her greatest goals in life.

From the Paper:

"Taking place in the South during the summer of 1964, Secret Life begins with Lily and her African-American housekeeper/nanny Rosaleen heading to a voter's rally. After a run-in with some of the town's bigots, Rosaleen gets thrown in jail. The taunting by these three men, "Did you hear that? We got ourselves a model citizen," typified many Southerners who did all they could to keep the blacks from voting. Lilly springs Rosaleen, and the two set out in search of Lilly's past. The only clue to follow is a label Lilly found in a box with her mother's meager belongings."

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