Forgiveness is a theme that runs deep in The Secret Life of Bees as Lily struggles to forgive herself, her father, and her mother.
From the opening pages, Lily is tormented with a memory of her mother that involves a gun. She is haunted by a nagging feeling that somehow her mother's death on this night is her fault, but since she was only four when her mother died, she has little information to go on. At the end of the book, T. Ray finally levels with her:
I could tell you I did it. That's what you wanna hear. I could tell you she did it to herself, but both ways I'd be lying. It was you who did it, Lily. You didn't mean it, but it was you. (chapter 14)
This is a heavy burden for a young girl to carry around, but by this point in the novel, the truth serves as a means of spiritual freedom instead of bondage. Lily realizes that in the place of her mother, she has been gifted with "more mothers than any eight girls off the street." She begins moving forward by both remembering her mother and forgiving herself for the accident.
Lily also struggles with her abusive father who both verbally and physically takes out his anger on her. She calls him T. Ray instead of any term of endearment because she notes that he's never acted like a "daddy" to her. T. Ray invents forms of torture for her to suffer for infractions (such as being outside after dark). In the final pages of the novel, Lily realizes that T. Ray has been struggling with his wife's death. When Lily tells him that her mother had stayed with August, he responds:
I looked for her everywhere I could think. And she was right here...she was right here. (chapter 14)
T. Ray then begins to transfer his feelings of loss and grief onto Lily, thinking that she is Deborah and telling her that she isn't going to leave him again. Lily begins to see the depth of pain that her mom's death has caused T. Ray and how she caused him much pain even before she died. She helps bring T. Ray back to reality in the present, and her feelings about all the loss he's suffered heals her feelings of resentment toward him. She hopes that when he leaves her with August, his intentions are to give her a better life, and she even notes that sometimes there is great power in imagination.
Lily also has to forgive her mother. Though she seeks a connection with her in various ways, both tangibly and intangibly, Lily must come to terms with the fact that her mother abandoned her before she died. She left Lily with T. Ray and went to live with August and her sisters, and Lily is greatly pained that her mother would leave her with her abusive father. The truth behind her mother's abandonment causes Lily great pain:
Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now. (chapter 12)
Yet Lily does find a way to both love her mother and accept her painful past. She finds a way to honor her mother's memory and spirit in living with August, and she forgives her for the pain she caused their family. Lily has lived much of her life devoid of love, and when she finds it with August and her sisters, she finds the strength of forgiveness as well.
Lily's ability to forgive herself makes it easier for her to forgive others. It's telling that when T. Ray comes to the Boatwright house to take Lily back home with him, Lily actually apologizes to her father for running away. Given everything that's happened between them we might expect Lily to castigate T. Ray for his numerous shortcomings as a father.
But by this stage in the story, Lily has learned the power of forgiveness. She's looked deep into her own soul and recognized her own sinful nature; and she forgives herself for her sins. In turn, this has given her the ability to forgive the sins of others, no matter how unpleasant they may be. Lily's new-found capacity to forgive is a sign of strength, a sign of emotional maturity, and of just how far she's come in her own journey of self-discovery.
A huge way in which forgiveness is a theme in Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is that Lily, the main character, must forgive herself for accidentally killing her own mother when she was a small child. Her mother, Deborah, had left her abusive husband T. Ray, but she had come back for Lily. In a fight between Deborah and T. Ray, a gun somehow ended up on the floor near Lily, who was only four years old at the time. Lily does not exactly remember how things happened, but she accidentally pulled the trigger, and Deborah was shot.
Lily carries a heavy guilt with her, as well as a deep longing for some sort of connection to her mother. It is Lily's box full of her mother's possessions that helps her and Rosaleen find the Boatwright sisters, who help her create a new life for herself and learn more about who her mother was.
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