TSLOB Reflection

Hello everyone, todays entry kind of wraps everything up about the novel that Ive read which is The Secret Life of Bees. Like any other novels or stories, the Secret Life of Bees too has many values that we can acquire. One of the values that left a great impact to me was that in this cruel world, we cant live alone. This is because we must have other people's support in order for us to get through hardships. For instance in order for Lily to achieve her goal, she cannot do it all alone. Because she needs either a companion or a partner to always be by her side and help her. In this case, Lily has Rosaleen. Another example to show that we cannot live alone as it gives a great impact on us is through May's situation. Since the death of her sister, April, she hasn't been like herself. The tragedy caused May to be emotionally unstable and cannot control herself. This shows that May cannot survive in this world alone without her twin. The thing i like about this novel is that the storyline is quite interesting as it describes how the situation was during 60s. But the thing i dislike is this story portrays more to a feminine side. I'm not being sexist tho, but i find it hard to relate it to myself.
Would i recommend this novel? I think I would, as this novel is full of lessons that we can learn for a better life.

MIRROR

Hello fellow earthlings ! I have returned as I was assigned to write a reflection about the Secret Life Of Bees novel .

                     Okay, after finally finish reading the novel what surprise me that the novel contain like a lot morals and deeds that the human kind can take heed . But on this case , I'm just going to tell a little bit about it . The thing I learned about this novel is relationships could make your life a better one and it clearly show how important it is in this novel . I love how the relationship between Lily and August had pushed me into reading this novel until the end . How the writer show that Lily is in desperate need of a mother and child relationship really show me how one need a motherly love . We can see through how Lily and August relationship build up really touched my heart . The relationship between Lily and June also caught my attention , it is an example of how a person could change in time , how June finally make a loving relationship with Lily . Not to mention the lovely bond between June and Neil build up through out the novel was an exciting moment for me .

                 What I enjoyed about this novel is how it show the lives of the African american during the 1960s . This novel have teach me a lot about their culture and lifestyle during that period of time , it also gave me an image  of  how racial discrimination and racism is a horrible and cancerous thing that should be banned and not practiced in this world . The hardship of Rosaleen enduring the beating of the white people at South Carolina only because she was protecting herself and the incident where Zach got jailed for the crime that he did not commit show me that racism is a no go . This teaches me that all person whether your race , skin and culture should be treated equally and have the same rights. I also admired the strong will of Zach when he got out of jail and said that he became more ambitious to become a lawyer . This kind of attitude can keep me going further in this harsh world.

               The usage of quotes at the beginning of every chapter have caught my interest . At first I thought that the quotes were just to decorate the novel but what shocked me is that it have a connection to the chapter . For example , at chapter 9 , the quote is about the death of the queen bee will lead to mess in the hive , it reflects the chapter about Lily life without a mother , how she could not be a proper lady without her mother . This clever usage of quotes have opened my eyes about the beauty of writing novels.

             Regardless of all the nonsense I have wrote above , I would like to recommend others to read this wonderful masterpiece . This novel will open your views about the world and will teach you many good things beside the girly lifestyle of Lily which really bug me off . 

That’s all for my entry. I hope you guys can also share your thoughts and opinion about the novel. Please feel free to leave your comments! 

                

Reflexion to BeezzZZ

Hello my busy friends *smirking face*. Here, I’m going to share about my own interpretations towards the novel “The Secret Life of Bees” from some aspects. First of all, I did learn something new that changed my perception of what is really means by the word “life”. Before I read this novel, I tend to have a belief that every people in this world are enjoying their life but the characters had changed it. Lily Owens, June Boatwright, May Boatwright and T.Ray had portrayed that life is not as happy as what I believed. These characters face many unwelcome or harmful complications and needing to be dealt with until give the big impact on their lives. I almost cry during my reading when I imagine what I could do if I were one of them.

Among the characters, the most I admired is Rosaleen. She is a black woman and the only mother figure Lily knows for most of her life. She is a housekeeper whom T. Ray pulls out of the fields to care for his daughter after his wife is killed. She has amazing spirit and courage, for which she sometimes pays a terrible price, as when she spits on the white men who accost her on her way to voter registration. She shows a high self-esteem in defending herself from the troubles although she got beaten by the guys with no sense of humility. She taught me to be a strong woman and believe that “not all women are weak, they’re full of surprises” and she successfully made herself to be one of them. I keep wondering how a woman can be brave like her. As a woman, she also shows her sense of motherhood when she loves and cares for Lily and could never hurt her. Rosaleen is sweet like honey *happy face*. 

Next is my favourite line. It was said by August which is “Putting black cloths on the hives is for us. I do it to remind us that life gives way into death, and then death turns around and gives way into life” on page 206. I felt this line is so meaningful and wonderful. There is such a big meaning behind it and could also be an analogy by the author since death as giving way to life is seen twice in this novel. The first instance is the way that May’s death propels June to marry Neil, thus establishing their new life together. The second time is when Lily finally reconciles with her mother’s death and is set free to truly begin her own life.

In conclusion, I recommend this book for those who are struggling to achieve their dreams in life because they can boost up their inner spirit or motivation to continue doing the efforts when they get into the novel’s world. They can relieve that all problems that they’re facing or the whirlwind of emotions and activities is not as tough as what Lily Owens faced in her early age of fourteen. Let’s spread the positive vibes and live the life. Put the quote “There is nothing perfect...only life” in our heart and live happily. 

Good night and have a sweet dreams, babies. *face throwing a kiss*

Just Another Reflection About The Novel

Hello guys! It has been a while since the last time I update this blog. I was so 'buzy' with other assignments (for most of the time). For this time around, this blog entry is basically about my personal comment and reflection about The Secret Life of Bees novel. Enjoy your reading guys.

Let’s start with what I learned from the novel. Pretty much there are a lot of things that I learned from the novel. For example, we should not be so stereotypical and racist towards each other, we should be brave enough to take the risks and explore new opportunities and we should convey our love to each other. Well, all those moral values are the cliché ones. For me, the best thing I learned from the novel is that we should make use of things in our surroundings as a catalyst to enhance our motivation to achieve our dreams. What really triggered me to come into this moral value is the way Zach cope when he was jailed. He had this vengeful interest in race relations and civil rights that actually increased his eager to be more motivated on his dream to become a lawyer. For other cases, maybe we can use our hobbies that are related to our dreams as a motivation or we can use the fact that we love our parents and we want them to feel proud when we succeed.

Ok next is the best part of the novel based on my reading. It’s the main character, Lily. It’s about how she developed her self-identity. The writer pictured her sufferings at the beginning of the novel and that actually triggered readers to sympathize her and to be curious on how is she going to solve all those sufferings. As the story goes on, the writer conveyed how she slowly discovered the secrets of her mother as she explored new things and took the risks of running away from her father, T. Ray. She end up having a new life full of love with Rosaleen and the calendar sisters. The part that I don’t really like about the novel is the story. For me, I think it just lacks the sense of thrill and suspense. The story is a bit too linear.     

I would recommend this novel to others because I think for overall, this novel is quite good. It was worth my time to actually read it (even though I don’t really like reading novels). This novel has lots of moral values and it reminds us on how bad the situation was back in the sixties when it comes to racism. The fact that the characters in the novel crossed the boundary of racism mentalities of the people at that time is really interesting. I guess the saying “love has no boundary” is true after all. So, that’s all from me for this entry, and I hope u guys enjoyed reading it. Probably u want to share your thoughts or you want to correct my mistakes about the novel, so don’t forget to put your comments down below. Have a blessed life guys.   

                                                                                                                               

     ^        ^

\=(O  w  O)=/
 

A time to reflect

A-yo everyone! So as we are finally come to an end of our lesson on TSLOB novel ......... it's time for the reflection!

Okay so after finished reading the novel(thank god) there are surprisingly many morals that i have learnt. But the one that gets me i that no matter what every clouds has its own silver lining. Thick and dark clouds sometimes obstruct the sun. When it happens, the surroundings darken. It is surely not a pleasent sight, but if we look at the clouds carefully we can see that their edges are tinted with a silvery glow. This glow tells us that the sun is somewhere there behind the clouds. As time passes, the clouds will move off and the sun will come out of it. Wherever there is sorrow, happiness will be somewhere nearby. Whenever there is shadow, light should be nearby. And whenever there is darkness, the bright light is near. In the same way as Lily, although at first her life has been such a miserable one with her abusive father but in the end her life couldnt be better with the Boatwright sisters and Rosaleen. Like the silver tint in the edges of thr dark cloud, hapiness always lurks behind the darkest hour. 

(spot the copy pasting activity going on?)

The thing that i like the most about this novel is its story line that is not cliche as any other novel out there(probably because i haven only read two or three English novel before). I like how the novel starts with Lily feeling unsure whether if she was the one who killed her mother when she was four. It somehow kept me wondering about it and also pushed me to continue my reading. I also like how in every chapter there will always one or two facts about bees. On how they survived during winter, the role of every bees in the colony and so many more. The thing that i disliked the most is the lack of narration on T-Ray and Deborah's relationship. The author should add a little more details on their relationship and how they end-up wrangle with each other. 

One last thing, I would not recommend this novel to ones who do not wish to understand more about life. This novel really opens up my mind to appreciate my life better than before and also to treat others equally as we are all humans no matter white, black or blue our skin color is.

Reflection Time

        Hey guys, it’s me again. Days and weeks has passed by and I can finally say that I have finally finished reading the novel of “Secret Life Of Bees”. Yes it took me some time to finish the book as you can tell I’m quite of a slow reader. Although I’m a slow reader, I got the time to fully understand the plot of the story and what it was trying to potrey in the novel. 

        Based on this novel, I personally have learned a few number of things that I could grasp from it while reading this. One of the things that I have learned is that racism is a pretty big factor in this novel. As the setting of the novel was being held at a time where the whites pretty much overruled against the coloured, there’s a lot of things that we can learn from this as nowadays we live in a time where the colour of the skin doesn’t matter anymore and everyone is now accepted for who they are as a person. For example, the african americans were poorly discriminated at that time and we’re mostly abused from the whites. From this we can learn how it doesn’t matter who you are, everyone should have their equal freedom of speech and wiling to do anything that they want without anyone restricting them. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight, small or big and even white or black, everyone should have the right to speak up for themselves and should have equal respect for each other. 

        Another thing I learned from this novel, we should always accept the truth eventhough we don’t want it to be true. Plus, even if we find out the truth is not what we expected it to be, we shouldn’t give hate towards it and should always fully understand the situation first before simply jumping into it and make judgement. For example, at the ending of the novel it states that Lily found out that her mother Deborah actually left her and T.Ray and went to stay with August in Tiburon. Lily couldn’t accept the truth of how her mother left them because she always had this mindset of how sweet and loving her mom is and never thought she could do such a thing to her. Lily was always sad and down because she never really got to know her mom very well and all she wanted was to spend more time with her mom and feel what’s it like to have a mom in her life. Because of this she was filled with rage and just couldn’t accept the truth but sooner on she learns to accept her mom’s decision and moves on. From this we can learn to always forgive and forget eventhough the person has done much wrong in the past. We should hold grudges towards them and always accept them back into our lives no matter how horrible their mistake was. 

What I loved about this novel that it showed how people should stand up for themselves and their rights no matter how much hate they receive. For instance, this type of character has been shown by different types of people in the novel like Rosaleen and Zach. Rosaleen stood up for herself when some people called her a nigger and treated her poorly and Zach stood up for his friend when his friend threw a water bottle at a policemen and took the hit for his friend. This shows how brave these type of people are and they’re not afraid to stand up for themselves. Another thing I love about this novel is how some people can accept one another for who they genuinely are and the colour of the skin is not a matter to most people. People should not be quick to judge a person like the saying “Don’t judge a book by it’s colour” because you never really know the person until you get to know them. I realised that this is very much shown in this novel like how August accepted Lily and Rosaleen to stay at their home eventhough Lily is a white person and August and her family are of different skin colour, they still accepted her. Other than that, August didn’t want to kick her out of the house once she knew the truth about her and found out that she was lying. This shows that eventhought they live in such a time where the blacks are discriminated, they still show great morals towards others. Basically I just didn’t like how people just always had this mentality and this negative image of the african americans. Like we shouldn’t be quick to judge as they are human beings just like us too and they should be given equal respect. 

        In conclusion, I would really like to recommend this book to other people as I have learned quite a lot of new morals and I think people can learn a lot from this once they have finish reading this book. Trust me, this book may be quite long but it definitely has it benefits. 

Reflection Time !

Hey guys! Have you guys finished the Secret Life of Bees? Yes? No? Okay, since I’ve already finished reading the whole novel (I’m very happy to finally finished it) for today’s entry I am going to share with you guys the things that I’ve learnt from the story and what I like and dislike about it.

Actually, there are so many things that I’ve learnt from the story but I’ll just share the things that really hit me. First of all, the thing that I’ve learnt from the novel is it is important to have courage and resilience in our life. You know, life is full of challenges and obstacles. No matter how strong we are, there will be times when we will fall, there are times when we will be low and there are times when we feel we are at the worst part of life. But, without courage and resilience, how can we stand up again? How are we able to stand on our feet and start running again? We need these two things to be strong and spread our wings to fly again. In the novel, Lily who was only 14 at that time had a very strong heart and courage to change her way of living- being coward to being brave, being secretive and scared of the world to being open and strong. This part of Lily really taught me a lot about the importance of courage and resilience in life. Second, unity. As a Malaysian who live in country that have a diversity of races and religions, I am always aware about the importance of unity. We must learn to respect and accept other races’ customs and beliefs and try to understand them. The discrimination if African American in that were potrayed in The Secret Life of Bees really shows the need of unity in a community or society. The last thing I’ve learnt from the novel is love. Everyone needs love because without love, there will be no ties and relationships. From the novel, I learnt that it is a need to love and care for one another, no matter we are friends, families or even strangers. It really touched my heart how August loved and cared for Lily very much even though she didn’t know Lily very well at first and Lily is a white girl. This shows how love can unite people in the world regardless the skin colour and blood ties.

Next, what I really love and enjoy about The Secret Life of Bees is the positive values and messages that the author tried to instil in the mind of readers such as unity, love between family members, bravery, courage, resilience and more. The storyline is very complex and unexpectable. This is why I found the story very unique and uncliched. You can’t never imagine and expect how the story will be next. The author also has her own unique way of writing when she related every chapter with the life of bees where we can gain knowledge about the bees life and how the community of bees connect and communicate with each other while producing their honey. However, there are also some things that I quite disagree and dislike about the novel. One of them is the storyline is very slow even though it is interesting. There are so many unimportant events that took place in the novel. It kind of make me feel bored while reading it. Also, I kind of dislike this novel because it is not my type. I usually read horror, mystery and teenagers novels so that’s why I found this novel quite boring and dull.

Regardless of all these negative thoughts of mine, I really want to recommend others to read this book especially my little brothers and sister. This is because I think this kind of novel will open their minds about the world outside and help them discover and explore more about life. They can also learn about the cultures of the western. The story is also captivating and interesting for others to read and enjoy during their leisure time as it can improve and enhance your current knowledge about the world and also BEES. Besides, people can learn a lot from the moral values in the story and instil them in our lifestyle and mindset.

That’s all for my entry. I hope you guys can also share your thoughts and opinion about the novel. Please feel free to leave your comments! J