The Writers' Circle

The Secret Life of Bees reveals the deepest necessities and feelings of human beings. Sorrow and pain are felt throughout the course of this novel from Lily's lost mother to the ever so sensitive May who soaks up the whole world's pain. Sue Monk Kidd uses the powerful metaphors of May's wall, her cleansing baths, and her death to expose man's deepest sorrows and his necessity to liberate them.
	May's fragile emotions and her way of releasing them reveal the strength and power of rocks. She takes in all of the world's sorrow and looses control. To sooth her outbreaks, she constructs a wailing wall "'Like they have in Jerusalem'" (97) out of rocks from the babbling creek in the woods. "'All those bits of paper [that are] stuck between the stones are things May has written down-all the heavy feelings she carries around'" (98), and when she put the pieces of paper between the rocks, the rocks soak up that heavy feeling. At any time, May can walk out to her everlasting wall and let out her inner sorrow into a stone fortress, keeping it there away from the world. May represents all of man-kind's need to let their pain go as well as revealing the longevity and strength of rocks. 
	The importance of the cleansing and purifying abilities of water is conveyed persistently throughout this novel. After May receives the news about Zach, Rosaleen and Lily follow August and June upstairs and peer through the bathroom door which "Was cracked open enough for [them] to see May sitting in the tub in a little cloud of steam, hugging her knees. June scooped up handfuls of water and drizzled them slowly across May's back" (89). Water in this scene is potent enough to be able to restore May to a calm, composed state by touching her emotionally and sluicing her sorrows away from her. All humans are drawn to water and its cleansing abilities. After Lily learns the reality about her mother, she constantly finds her way down to the peaceful river behind the Boatwright's house. The lulling sound of the ripples of a stream, faint reflections on a placid lake, and warmth of an evening bath works in mysterious ways within us that help to flush out our pain.       
               Water, in addition, has ways to renew and heal from death and pain. Subsequent to May's disappearance, August, June, Lily, and Rosaleen depart from the house to search for her. They locate "[her][lying] in the river, just beneath the surface. Her eyes were wide open and unblinking, and the skirt of her dress fanned out and swayed in the current." (192). All of May's built up emotions were symbolically washed away in the ripples of the river in the last moments of her life. However, with Lily's quote "You could die in a river, but maybe you could get reborn in it, too." (229) unveils a completely different connotation of May's death. She was provided with a peaceful death in a cleansing river. And even though the river killed, water has a mysterious way of giving back: by cleansing and allowing people to liberate their pain.
	Any time we are exposed to anguish we capture it within us. It is a necessity of humans to relieve this restrained pain in some means. May uses rocks to soak up her pain, present day individuals may use their family, friends, or church to soak up their pain. And all of us are drawn to one purifying, rejuvenating source and the elixir of life: water. Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Secret Life of Bees uses potent, concrete metaphors to carry out unveiling our need to let loose the pain that everyone contains.