Skip to main content

What are two examples of foreshadowing in The Secret Life of Bees?

One example of foreshadowing in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees shows itself within the first few pages. Lily is fascinated by bees that mysteriously appear in her bedroom. She first sees them buzzing around and landing on her wall map, and she decides to catch several of them in a mason jar. When she later opens the lid, the bees simply fly out; this helps Lily realize that she has the power to leave the abuse of T-Ray if she chooses. These early bee interactions foreshadow that these tiny creatures will become an important part of her future. This comes to pass as a result of her living with the Boatwrights and helping out on the farm with honey harvesting.


A second point of foreshadowing occurs when August explains the sad situation surrounding the suicide of May’s twin, April. August explains that May never fully recovered from April’s self-drowning when they were children; this enlightens readers about the trauma behind May’s mental instability and bipolar tendencies. Readers are shown the gravity of May’s situation after multiple occasions where she breaks down at seemingly tiny incidents. After May learns about Zach’s wrongful imprisonment, a weight too heavy for her to carry, she, too, drowns herself, which fulfills this second example of foreshadowing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more