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Idioms
Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Bees at Night:
Although her father doesn’t keep bees himself, Lily’s room at T. Ray’s house fills with them anyway. As Lily watches the bees slip in and out of her bedroom wall in The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd uses visual imagery and a simile describing the bees’ wings to show how Lily ties the bees' movement to her own sense of longing.
At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest.
The visual imagery in this passage fills the small room with movement and sound. As the bees fly in their tight paths above her bed, Lily lies still and watches them, longing for escape. The bees can squeeze in and out of the cracks in the wall at will, but Lily is trapped in her room without any prospect of escape. The “propellor” sound the bees make reminds her of planes, another image of freedom and flight that contrasts with Lily’s own stasis. She focuses on the “propellor” rumble so intensely that she feels it “hum along” her skin. Kidd also deepens the visual comparison between aeroplanes and bees when she writes that Lily sees the wings shine “like bits of chrome.” Rather than just being insects, their shiny, metallic wings make them into tiny planes in her eyes. The bees aren’t touching her or reacting to her, but she feels connected to them and longs to be as free as they are.
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Explanation and Analysis—Mud and Peaches:
Lily holds on to her one meager memory of her mother as tightly as she can. Here, Kidd uses a flashback and imagery that calls forth all the senses to show how Lily clings to a part that brings her comfort:
I followed her into the closet and scooted beneath dress hems and pant legs, into darkness and wisps of dust and little dead moths, back where orchard mud and the moldy smell of peaches clung to T. Ray’s boots. I stuck my hands inside a pair of white high heels and clapped them together.
Each tiny detail of the space inside the closet remains clear in Lily’s memory. She doesn’t just remember being in a closet, she remembers the darkness beneath the dresses and the shapes of the hanging clothes. She recalls how the peach smell on T. Ray’s boots brings the world of the orchard outside into her mother’s private space, and how it felt to pick up and clap together “a pair of white high heels.” Kidd invokes sight, touch, smell, and sound here to show how deeply moments like this are embedded in Lily’s sense of self. Each detail helps the reader feel the closeness of the small space around her in the closet.
This flashback shows how Lily uses her excellent sense of recall as a link to her mother. She remembers the closet because she saw it as a refuge from T. Ray’s anger, and because she felt that the space held her mother’s presence even after her death. Lily returns to this part of the memory when she needs to feel safe. Its contents also help to explain why she feels so much safer in the Boatwrights' women-only home than she does with T. Ray.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Moon Cracked:
As Lily and Rosaleen sleep in the woods the night before they reach Tiburon, Lily has a deeply unsettling nightmare. She uses visual and auditory imagery and hyperbole to show how fear follows her as she slips into unconsciousness:
I plopped onto the mossy dirt. We stared across the water at each other. In the dark she looked like a boulder shaped by five hundred years of storms. […] In my dream I was back on the peach farm […] I could see a huge, round moon in the sky. […] Next I heard a sound like ice breaking, and, looking up, I saw the moon crack apart and start to fall. I had to run for my life.
Lily and Rosaleen sit on opposite sides of the stream from one another, and as Lily falls asleep shapes and colors start to distort. The imagery here slips quickly from reality into dream logic. Rosaleen stops looking like a human sleeping and begins to resemble an ancient boulder “shaped by five hundred years of storms.” When Lily is fully asleep, she dreams of a perfectly round moon hanging over T. Ray’s peach farm. The odd sound of “ice breaking” on a South Carolina peach farm makes her look up, at which point the moon threatens to fall on her. Although they’re clearly fantastical, these sensory details give the dream a sharp, almost solid quality for the reader.
When Lily describes how the moon “crack[s] apart and start[s] to fall,” it’s as though her dreaming mind is engaging in hyperbole because of the stress and anxiety of leaving home. The falling moon exaggerates the scale of her fears. She’s so afraid of what might happen next that she’s literally picturing the sky falling on her head.
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Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Red Hot Toes:
As they walk toward Tiburon having escaped the jail, Lily asks Rosaleen what she dreamed about the night before. Rosaleen answers in a way that surprises her, using visual imagery and a simile to describe a startling dream:
She gazed at the treetops, rubbing her elbows. "Well, let’s see. I dreamed the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., knelt down and painted my toenails with the spit from his mouth, and every nail was red like he’d been sucking on red hots." I considered this as we set off for Tiburon, Rosaleen walking like she was on anointed feet, like her ruby toes owned the whole countryside.
The imagery in Rosaleen’s description is quite vivid and surreal. The idea of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. kneeling to paint her toenails red with his spit seems very irreverent. This is especially true as encouraging Black citizens to vote was at the center of Dr. King’s movement, and Rosaleen has just risked her life trying to do so. However, the idea of colorful spit as being important is linked to the reason Rosaleen was sent to jail. Dribbling the “black juice” from her snuff on her aggressors’ shoes provoked them into beating her. In her dream, Dr. King’s “red” spit paints her toenails prettily, which has the opposite effect. In the dream, “spit” on people's feet becomes a positive, rather than a negative thing. The similes Lily uses deepen this effect. After she recounts this dream, Lily describes Rosaleen walking “like she was on anointed feet” and “like her ruby toes owned the whole countryside.” Rather than being defeated by her beating and imprisonment, Rosaleen chooses to take pride in her escape and in her refusal to back down in the face of White aggression. Her feet have been “anointed” with “rubies” by Dr. King, which makes her feel as though she “owns the whole countryside.”
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Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Black Mary:
Even though she has seen the Black Mary depicted on the Boatwrights’ honey jars, Lily feels shock and fascination when she first sees the Black Madonna statue. Kidd uses visual imagery and metaphor to explore this when Lily arrives at the Boatwrights’ home. She stops in her tracks because the figure looks nothing like the religious images she grew up with:
She was black as she could be, twisted like driftwood from being out in the weather, her face a map of all the storms and journeys she’d been through. Her right arm was raised, as if she was pointing the way, except her fingers were closed in a fist. It gave her a serious look, like she could straighten you out if necessary.
The Virgin Mary would have been depicted as a peaceful-looking young White woman in the Christian tradition Lily was used to. However, this image of Mary is quite different, and the passage’s visual imagery stresses the statue’s strong and weathered appearance. The statue’s dark wooden surface, its natural, twisted shape, and its raised arm give the figure a sense of force that catches Lily off guard. Although it is nothing like the slender, girlish white Marys she grew up with, Lily can feel the power this statue contains. The Black Mary’s raised fist and stern posture add to her authority; Lily feels like this Mary could “straighten” anyone out.
The metaphor describing the statue’s face as “a map of all the storms and journeys she’d been through” turns its worn surface into a record of its journey across the world. Although the Black Mary’s face is lined and damaged, the lines seem to convey a record of strength and endurance, not decay. This is a very different representation of the mother of Jesus than Lily was expecting, but she feels instantly drawn to it, even more so than to its miniature on her honey jar.
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