Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- Novels like The Help have been criticized for representing the history of African Americans through the lens of a white person's experience—and, too, for presenting white characters as the "saviors" of African American ones. Does The Secret Life of Bees fall into the same traps or avoid them?
- What's with Lily's story about the swarm of bees invading her room at the beginning of the novel? That's the only semi-fantastical story that she herself offers the reader (she relays the fantastical stories of others, of course). Why begin her story that way? What is the story's significance? Is it a fantasy, or is it real?
- Men primarily play secondary/supporting roles in this novel. What does relegating men to the background do for the novel, in terms of achieving its larger thematic/symbolic goals?
- Lily's parents actually remain relatively enigmatic figures at the end of the novel. As much as Lily learns by talking to August and others, there's still a whole lot she (and we) don't understand even by the end. What does the novel achieve by leaving that history incomplete?
- Upon learning that her mother did leave her as a child, why does Lily start carrying around mouse bones???