Literary analysis : the secret life of bees

Literary Analysis:

Outline:

Hello, today I will talk about “The secret life of bees” my excerpt begins on page 18 with “After my morning…” and ends on page 20 at the end of the paragraph. So, I will begin by briefly summarize the article who is linked with my excerpt, then I will talk about the author’s intention, I will move on to the situation and the summary, then I will talk about the division, the setting and the characters. I will continue with the topics, the lexical fields and the figures of speech. Finally, I will end with a conclusion.

Summary of the text and link

My text talks about the position of women in the United States from 1940 to 2000. The main thing that helped the feminist movement is The Civil Rights Movement because the women requested equal rights for education not only for men of all races but also for the women. After the second world war, between the 40’s and the 50’s there has been a decline in women’s employment. One of the main reasons is because all the men were back home so they took their jobs. But during the 50’s more and more women started working because they wanted to have a career not only work at home and take care of the children. Moreover, the divorce rate increased so the women had to be self-sufficient. Consequently, they had to study to have a good job. The second reason why the women had to work at this time is because in a black family for example the salary of the man wasn’t sufficient to raise a family. Even if the female employment increased during these years a lot of Hispanic women didn’t considered higher education because the Hispanic culture is deeply rooted in people’s minds, so the women were convinced that their place was at home raising the children. To conclude these 60 years really helped women to find their place in the society but it’s really between the 60’s and the 70’s that the whole society really let woman have a college degree.

The link between this text and my excerpt is the possibility for a woman to have a higher education.

Because in my excerpt Lily does a girl’s job according to her (p.18) but after she realizes for the first time that she has the possibility to have a higher education, before she taught that because she was a woman, she couldn’t have this opportunity. When this happens in the book, we are in summer 1964, the year of the civil right movement but also the year of the progress of women’s rights and emancipation.

Author’s intention

According to me, the author wrote this excerpt to give the reader a context of the story and to help us understand better the characters. I think that this this part of the book is crucial because it shows how was the society at this time and the place of the woman in it.  Their place was at home taking care of the family not at university. If this excerpt didn’t exist, we would not have succeeded in understanding the mentality of the characters and their point of view about the society at the time.

Situate and summarize

Situation:

We are in the middle of the first chapter. Let’s have a look at what has just happened before this excerpt. We already know that Lily lost her mom when she was very young and that she doesn’t have a good relationship with her father T. Ray, he is very mean to her and she has to do exactly what he wants, or she may be punished.

Summary:

Here is the summary of my excerpt. It’s a Thursday afternoon, Lily goes to a highway to sell the peaches of her father, T-Ray. Usually there is always a lot of women who go to buy the fruits but this day there were none, so she is bored. We learn that T-ray doesn’t let his daughter read because this would give her cravings to go to college, which according to him is a waste of time if we are a girl but Lily loves reading and her teacher also says that she is very intelligent. This is the first time Lily realizes that, as a woman she has a career possibility she can go to college and not only go to a beauty school. So, she wants to become a professor and a writer. Lily starts writing and reading books, that her teacher had lent her, but her father still doesn’t agree with that and compares her with famous authors, but he misspells their names.

Division:

Now I will talk about the division. I entitled this excerpt “The awareness of Lily”. I divided it in 3 chunks. The first part goes from the 1st line to the 25th one when Lily says, “Sylvan’s Peach Queen” and this part is entitled “Lily’s habits”. The second chunk goes from “Up until Mrs Henry came along...” to “I planned to be a professor and a writer of actual books.” On page 19 line 40 and I called it “Lily realizes her possibilities for the future”. The last part goes from line 41 when the girls say “I kept a collection of my writings” to the end and is entitled “Lily tries to pursue her dreams”.

Setting:

The story takes place in Sylvan a little city in South Carolina, we are in the summer of 1964 the year of the Civil right movement. In my excerpt we are Thursday afternoon. We learn this when Lily says, “I spent the afternoon in the peach stand out on the highway...” on the first line and also on the 7th one when the girl says, “Thursday afternoons were usually big peach days”. This sentence also shows that Lily always sells peaches on Thursday afternoons.

Key aspects of the excerpt:

Characters

In my excerpt there are three characters, Lily, her father T.Ray and finally Lily’s teacher Mrs. Henry. I will firstly talk about Lily then I will move on to her father and I will finish with the description of Mrs. Henry.

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