Conflict between a parent and a child happens in many families. As children get older they begin to speak their mind and do not always agree with the parent and what they have to say. Every family is different, and have their own source of conflict. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd uses the death of lily’s mother and lily’s resemblance of her mother as a source of the conflict between Lily and her father TRay.
Lily is raised by her father TRay and their help Rosaleen. Rosaleen is the closest thing she has to a mother. Her father is very mean and doesn’t treat Lily right. As punishment TRay would make Lily kneel on grains of rice for a long period of time. Lily would have countless bruises and scars from the rice being stuck in her knee.
Lily and TRay would get into heated arguments, and they would both say things they didn’t mean. During their last argument before Lily runs away TRay blames Lily for her mothers death. Lily’s mother Deborah and TRay get into an argument when deborah tries to leave.
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Deborah points a gun at TRay when he doesn’t let her leave, he swats the gun out of hand and it hits the ground as they continue to fight. Lily was no older than four years old. Lily picks the gun up and pulls the trigger not knowing what she was doing. The bullet hit her mother and she died. TRay blames Lily for killing the only women he ever loved , and makes sure Lily knows what she did.
Believing what her father said Lily runs away in search of a memory of her mother. Blaming Lily for Deborah’s death is one source of conflict between her and her father. TRay is very angry and can’t deal with his own anger. Once Lily runs away she never looks back. She was determined to know the truth about her mother, but she was too scared to let everyone know who she really was.
At the end of the novel TRay finds Lily and demands her to come back home with him. Although she was a little afraid she stood her ground and refused to go with him. TRay slaps Lily really hard when he sees her wearing deborah’s hair pin. He kicks Lily and calls her ‘Deborah.’ He tells Lily she’s not leaving him again. He has his knife out and doesn’t realize she’s Lily.
When she shouts ‘Daddy,’ he realizes it is his daughter and drops the knife. Lily can see all the pain in his eye he has from Deborah leaving him. It was hard for TRay to raise Lily and treat her like his daughter because of all his anger. All the anger he had was towards Deborah leaving and because Lily reminded him so much of Deborah he took all his anger out on her. He took all his anger out on Lily not realizing that he was seeing deborah and not his daughter.
Once TRay realized that the resemblance between Deborah and Lily is a source of a conflict between he was able to have closure and not be so angry or hurt. He left his daughter behind because he knew it was best for her and it would be the best for his and her relationship. In The Secret life of Bees, Lily and TRay had conflict through resemblance and guilt.
At times two people have to realize why they are are having conflicts, and what is the source of the conflict. Once the source is revealed the two can work towards solving their problems. Having conflict between one another can cause a ton of trouble that can be avoided. No matter ho different a family is, everyone is going to have some kind of conflict, but there is always a resolution.
