Members of these groups interact with members of the Giro groups. The images that link these "spirit groups" (Shapiro, p. 832) are "maintained and codified through the agency of the symbols of blood, oil, honey and water." The rituals go well beyond "what Catholicism teaches" and indeed through these cultural activities the participants are rejecting Catholicism (which Lily certainly was doing in Kidd's novel) and saying that slaves have as much power as the Catholic saints.
In the Giro group that Shapiro (who is an anthropologist and who conducted field work in Brazil) attended, dende oil along with "water and honey" was placed "behind the door" during spirit sessions "to remove irradiations from the street and the crossroads so that bad things would not happen" (Shapiro, p. 835). The author (pp. 836-837) met Helena, a Giro spirit leader, and learned that honey is "specifically associated with the caboclo spirits of…...
Twice she disappeared in the fogged billows, then gradually reemerged like a dream rising up from the bottom of the night" (Kidd, p. 67). Bees creating "wreaths around her head" is adding another image to the element of honey and bees. In the ancient Greco-Roman world people wore wreaths as an indication of their rank in society, or their status, or their occupation. Apollo wore a wreath of laurel on his head, according to the literature. Laurel is used today when Olympic medals are given out, to pay homage to the original Olympic Games and the champions that trained so hard to achieve glory. And the Romans copied the Greeks by using laurel wreaths as symbols of achievement in the arts, I literature, education and government. Ovid, probably the most well-known poet in ancient Rome, is often pictured with a laurel wreath in his hair.
Because August has a cloud…...
Secret Life of ees
Taking place in the vicious American South in 1964, the era of the Civil Rights Act and increasing racial resentment, Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of ees is an plausible story not just about bees, but of the coming-of-age story, of the gift of love to transform our lives, and of the often misunderstood desire for comparable women and human rights. Even though this novel is not one of a reading level that is considered high, Kidd exhibits so many concealed significances, ones that involve the reader to push underneath the surface. Speaking to the wounds of losses, betrayal, and the lack of love, Kidd displays the power of women joining together to deal with those injuries, to evaluate each other emotions and themselves, and to produce a lot of people of real home and family. With that said, all of these attributes bear an impact…...
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Bibliography
Kidd, S.M. (2008). The Secret Life of Bees. Penguin.
Secret Life of Bees: The Not-So Secret Life of American Racism
The 2003 novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd could be subtitled: 'the not-so secret life of American racism.' Set in the deep south during the Civil Rights era, the novel chronicles the childhood of the motherless Lily and her coming-of-age to a greater state of emotional maturity. At the beginning of the novel, Lily is being raised by an abusive father and the only maternal figure in her life is Rosaleen, the family's maid. Lily comes to form a connection with Rosaleen and other African-American women that is deeper than that which exists with her own flesh and blood. The novel suggests that race is only skin deep, and that individual human connections are more important than the divisions that are created by politics and social constraints. The novel continually draws parallels between the oppression all…...
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Work Cited
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. New York: Penguin, 2003.
Sue Monk Kidd's book, The Secret Life of Bees, is a testament to the healing power of love in a young girl's life. Lily, was left motherless at four, and blames herself for her mother's death. The book is deeply moving and beautifully written, especially through Kidd's treatment of the loss of Lily's mother. Personally, the book reinforced my understanding of the important role a mother plays in her child's growth, and how love can heal many wounds.
The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, a young woman reeling from the death of her mother at the age of four. Lily lives with her ornery and dismissive father, and blames herself for her mother's death. She is largely alone in the world, with only the company of a black woman, Rosaleen, who her father has hired to keep up the house, and who ends up being Lily's…...
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Works Cited
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. Penguin Books, 2003.
She has a vivid imagination doubled by a deep understanding of the human nature and thus her stories are acting like parables. The story telling is similar to some point to that of Boccacio's Decameron. People will find a something in common with their own experiences and learn something out of them without feeling punished or admonished or even pointed at. One of the lessons Kidd is teaching here through Lily's adventures is that of racism, viewed both from the white and black perspectives.
Spirituality is omnipresent in the book, from the way Lily thinks of her mother as her guardian angel to the new religion she discovers in the Boatwright household, half Christian half self-made. The two worlds she lives in are separated by the same trace and that is where the master work of Kidd is revealed. A simple phrase is revealing more than an extended study on…...
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Works Cited:
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. Penguin, 2002
Not of the Same Feather: Cultural Appropriation in The Invention of Wings
As problematic as it may be for a white Southern author to presume understanding of the psyche of a slave, Sue Monk Kidd embeds enough nuances in The Invention of Wings to make the fictionalized account of the Grimke sisters compelling and enlightening. Alternating between the voices of Hetty (Handful) and Sarah is the literary device Kidd relies on to demonstrate different perspectives and points of view, while also showing what Hetty and Sarah have in common too. In fact, Kidd shows how Sarah and Hetty develop the courage to rebel against social norms and even the law in order to make the world a better place. Symbolism also helps tie together the disparate worlds in which Hetty and Sarah live. Thick with symbolism related to the theme of flying and the freedom flight implies, The Invention of Wings…...
Mass Culture and Popular Culture and Studying Bestsellers Books
This paper takes into account the differences in the best sellers written in the 1980's and in the 1990's. It also focuses on the themes of the best sellers from the two decades and what makes them appealing to the society.
Mass culture and popular culture and studying bestsellers books
In this day and age, books are being written with a motive to inculcate motives, teaching the readers a lesson every time they open the book.
Good books always serve as a constructive way to provoke idle thoughts. Women started writing as a profession back in the early 1800's. They started off writing articles for magazines, containing information on fashion, science, household tips, and covering other domestic issues. These magazines trained every woman with the proper code of etiquette, style and manner of dressing nicely even motivated women from the lower class to take up…...
There are costs to bearing and believing in such a secret.
These costs are manifested in many ways. There are the psychosomatic costs Jesse endures, his impotence, his weakness around the black boy in the jail, his tremors at the thought of Otis, "Now the thought of Otis made him sick. He began to shiver." There are also the psychological costs that Jesse is plagued by, the self-delusion associated with believing racism is moral, the mental anguish, and the constant struggle over whether he can trust his coconspirators, "They were forced to depend on each other more and, at the same time, to trust each other less" (Baldwin). What Baldwin is underscoring with these psychological and psychosomatic burdens is that the path Jesse has followed, a path of racism and discrimination, has led him to a very troubled existence.
Baldwin wants the reader to understand that proponents for a Jim Crow…...
In addition, both governments and churches began to grow suspicious of the group, probably because of the "organization's secrecy and liberal religious beliefs" (Watson, 2009). As a result, Portugal and France banned Freemasonry; in fact, it was a capital offense to be a Freemason in Portugal (Watson, 2009). Moreover, "Pope Clement XII forbade Catholics from becoming Freemasons on penalty of excommunication" (Watson, 2009). Feeling pressure in Europe, many Freemasons decided to flee the Old World and travel to the European colonies scattered throughout the world, most notably, America.
Influence on America
Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Freemasons and American history understands that, whatever resistance the Freemasons met with in Europe was not to be found in America. The Freemasons set up lodges in Boston and Philadelphia, and some of the founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. More importantly, the Freemasons are reported to have played a…...
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References
Crowe, F. (2003). Things a Freemason should know. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing.
Decker, E. (Unknown). Masonic rituals for the Blue Lodge. Retrieved April 14, 2009 from Saints Alive in Jesus.
Betool Khedairi, born in 1965 to an Iraqi father and a Scottish mother, is the author of Absent: A Novel. She received her B.A. In French literature from the University of Mustansiriya and traveled to different countries in the world. She wrote her very first novel, A Sky So Close, in Arabic language in the '90s which was later translated into other languages like English, Italian, French and Dutch. The novel, Absent, is about a young Iraqi girl named Dalal, who lived with her childless uncle and aunt, during the very difficult times when U.S. attacked Baghdad.
The young girl, Dalal coped with the tragedies of her life in her own way. It is a very beautiful story full of wit and black humor. The novel was written from the point-of-view of Dalal, who represents the title of the book "Absent." The title represents the loss of Dalal's parents and that…...
Frost's Poetry And Landscape
The Rise of Modernist Poetry
Between the years of 1912 and 1914 the entire temper of the American arts changed. America's cultural coming-of-age occurred and writing in the U.S. moved from a period entitled traditional to modernized. It seems as though everywhere, in that Year of 1913, barriers went down and People reached each other who had never been in touch before; there were all sorts of new ways to communicate as well as new communications. The new spirit was abroad and swept us all together. These changes engaged an America of rising intellectual opportunities and intensifying artistic preoccupation.
With the changing of the century, the old styles were considered increasingly obsolete, and the greatest impact was on American arts. The changes went deep, suggesting ending the narrowness that had seemed to limit the free development of American culture for so long. That mood was not to last. American…...
epublic, Plato conceptualizes the concept of the good primarily in terms of justice. Justice in turn extends from and manifests as harmony, both at the macrocosmic or universal levels as with the movement of the celestial bodies, and at the microcosmic or mundane levels as in political or social life. Plato also discusses the nature, essence, and importance of absolute good as an archetypal Form. The Form of Good is the seed of all things good, just, and harmonious in the universe. Plato is only slightly less concerned with Good from a moral standpoint, as the philosopher seems to take for granted that moral Good and virtue fall under the rubric of the Form of Good. In Leviathan, Hobbes's concern with good has much more to do with the process of critical thinking and understanding the relative nature of human judgment. Human concern with good reflects the constant need…...
People's Characterizes
Chadha's absorbing first novel depicts a family of first-generation immigrants in upstate New York encountering the difficulties of survival, wanting to belong in a world that looks down on minorities and also longing for home. It has amazing characters such as the Teenager Vic Singh who has an amazing fascination with butterflies and then starts noticing strange things going on in the house odd lately. There is clearly a lot going on with him for instance he has blog, recounting all of his sightings and meditations on nature, is a clever device advancing the plot. Vic has continuously been a victim of bullies for the reason that his Sikh heritage but it doesn't bother him, particularly after he falls into a sinkhole in the woods that leads him to his own secret place. Then there is his sister Vic's sister, Isabella has been persuaded by her best friend…...
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