To help middle school students learn how to analyze literature, teachers can begin by introducing common literary devices, such as metaphors and similes. Once students understand the definitions of these important terms, they should practice frequently using a variety of texts. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd provides many opportunities for students to identify metaphors and discuss their function in the text. Here are some examples from the novel that teachers can use to help students practice new analysis skills.
Identify Metaphors in The Secret Life of Bees
Lily, the protagonist and narrator in this first-person novel, uses colorful figurative language to describe the people and environment around her. Here are some examples of metaphors that she uses in her descriptions.
The following quote is spoken by Lily Owens when she observes May luring a roach out of the house so she can avoid killing it. “I had nearly finished a glass of juice before I let myself look at the little highway of broken graham crackers and marshmallow bits that May was constructing across the floor, how it started at the sink and angled toward the door, thick with golden crumbs and smudges of sticky white” (Kidd 172). Here, the trail of graham cracker crumbs is compared to a highway. Since this sentence does not use "like" or "as," it is clearly a metaphor.
This next quote compares protection to an actual curtain. “No one knocked on the door and dragged us off to jail. Mary had made us a curtain of protection” (Kidd 92). Teachers can encourage students to imagine what this curtain would look like. Some may say this quote also exemplifies imagery.
Metaphors Describe People and Express Emotions
Lily uses the following metaphor to compare her hair to a bird’s nest. “My hair was black like my mother’s but basically a nest of cowlicks, and it worried me that I didn’t have much of a chin” (Kidd 9). Metaphors can illuminate other literary devices as well. In this case, when Lily compares her hair to a nest, she is also providing an example of direct characterization. Direct characterization occurs when readers are told exactly what a character looks like. Readers can surely imagine Lily’s hair as unruly.
This next quote is spoken by Lily. “You just had to faint. Only I didn’t know how to make it happen, how to pull the plug so I could drain away when I needed to” (Kidd 112). In this metaphor, Lily compares herself to a bathtub filled with water. She feels that she just wants to drain away.
In the following metaphor, Lily entertains a romantic relationship with Zach. “It seemed like I was now thinking of Zach forty minutes out of every hour, Zack, who was an impossibility. That’s when I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love” (Kidd 133). In this quote, Lily compare love to a fire. The less likely their love is to flourish, the more she wants it to do so. This is an apt, universal connection, linking passionate love to burning flames.
Lily expresses these powerful metaphors to compare August and Rosaleen to different parts of the statue of Our Lady, Mary. “If August is the red heart on Mary’s chest, Rosaleen is the fist” (Kidd 182). Once students have identified that the above quote reveals a metaphor, they should be encouraged to identify which two objects are being compared. Lily compares August to Mary’s heart and Rosaleen to Mary’s fist. Readers should be cautioned not to assume that August is being compared to Rosaleen, as oftentimes students will look at the proper nouns in a sentence first.
Metaphors are fun to locate, exciting to discuss, and challenging for students to write themselves. Students can discuss these metaphors and consider their function in The Secret Life of Bees. Often when discussing metaphors, students will realize that other literary devices may be revealed in the same lines. Students should practice expressing their interpretation of the deeper meaning of metaphors in this novel.
Source
- Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. Penguin Books: 2002.
Thadra Petkus - Thadra Petkus is currently a freelance writer, English teacher and mentor. Although she has taught students from age two through ...
