Comparing The Secret Life Of Bees 'And Rocket Boys'
1544 Words7 Pages
Mothers Know Best Relatives and friends often compare children to their parents, seeking similarities in their personalities and appearances. However, while they may appear as direct reflections of their parents, many children are the antithesis of their guardians, and have conflicting opinions and aspirations. This can create tension between parents and their children, especially during adolescence, when teenagers are trying to develop a sense of identity, and the risk of disagreement between adults and children is highest. In the Bildungsroman novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and the coming-of-age memoir Rocket Boys by Homer (Sonny) Hickam, Jr., the protagonists experienced tension with their families, though still managed to persevere and ultimately succeed. While the tensions that…show more content… However, Homer constantly badgered Sonny to consider becoming a mining engineer, though this only acted as fuel to propel Sonny forward, motivating him to work harder at building his rockets to make them more advanced and intricate, all the while helping him find his true identity, and to “see himself past Coalwood” and past his father’s expectations (Hickam 29). If his father had never disapproved of him, perhaps Sonny would have not turned the tension in his family into the motivation to persevere in his rocket building in order to impress his father, and perhaps he would have never ultimately earned his father’s approval or succeeded in life. Like Sonny, Lily in The Secret Life of Bees had different views about her future than her abusive father, and needed to escape in order to discover her identity. After being left by his wife and witnessing her tragic death, T. Ray, Lily’s father, became insensitive to women and an opposer of their education, which lead to tension between him and his teenaged daughter, who aspired to become a “professor and writer” (Kidd 16). However, T. Ray ridiculed Lily’s intelligence and passion for learning, mocking