Novel(s)

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

     "The best meal was lunch, which Zach and I ate under the cool of the pine trees. May fixed us bologna sandwiches nearly every single day. We could also count on candlestick salad, which meant half a banana standing up in a pineapple slice. "Let me light your candle," she'd say, and strike an imaginary match. Then she'd fasten a bottled cherry on the tip of the banana with a toothpick. Like Zach and I were still in kindergarden. But we'd go along with her, acting all excited over her lighting the banana. For dessert we crunched cubes of lime Kool-Aid, which she'd frozen in ice trays." (The Secret Life of Bees, page 120)

     ...Lily, the main character in the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, doesn't have millions of dollars to waste away and buy things that temporarily make her happy. She really doesn't even have any money to buy anything, whether it's a piece of cent candy or a pair of shorts when she grows out of her own. But, she has found happiness in a physical object which is her lunchtime snacks. She expresses that even though she is not genuinely excited about the snack May is bringing, she's excited over the fact that May has found happiness in preparing the snacks. I personally am unsure of whether this would be considered a happiness you can buy. You technically could buy a bologna sandwich at the market, and candlestick salad from some store. But would this make Lily happy? Or is it the fact that May's happy that Lily has found a happiness from the sandwich and salad? Bertrand Russel said, "The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good." I think this can relate to Lily because she's happy but she also has support from the "negro sisters" feeding her. If we all had that, life would be perfect. Life is definitely not always perfect and people are not satisfied with the happiness they can find. Lily still isn't happy by the end which is shown through the quote, "This is the autumn of wonders, yet every day, every single day, I go back to that burned afternoon in August when T. Ray left." (The Secret Life of Bees, page 302) When will we all be happy? And when we are, will it be through buying all the balogna sandwiches and candlestick salads in the world?