The Secret Life Of Bees Movie Analysis

The Secret Life of Bees novel and film versions both tell essentially the same basic story. One major theme both the film and novel represented was that imprisonment makes people feel small even when they are much stronger than originally perceived. However, the novel was a better representation of the work’s theme. Even with the fact that the imprisonment theme was presented in both versions, the novel demonstrated this theme in different ways from the film. The novel’s presentation of this theme of imprisonment could be seen through the reader’s view in a variety of events. As a start, “When I slid on the lid, it [the bee] went into a tail spin, throwing itself against the glass over and over with pops and clicks,” (Kidd, 11). The previous
The film was more of an external connection between the characters. Rosaleen says in the film, “I know you can't understand. Apologizing to those men would have just been a different way of dying. Except I had to live with it” (The Secret Life of Bees). This shows how Rosaleen felt imprisoned by the guilt of pouring spit over the white guy’s shoes. Though in the novel, it shows Rosaleen feeling this guilt in an actual imprisonment way, by sitting in a jail cell. The film version showed the pain and suffering through outside forces, meaning imprisonment was also shown through outside forces. These outside forces being emotions, the majority of the time. The novel version showed the struggle that came with the imprisonment and why the person felt so much stronger after they had been released, why they felt that they could actually live up to their full potential. Even with the fact that the novel and the film version of The Secret Life of Bees were similar in some basic elements of the storyline, the novel did a better job at demonstrating the theme. The theme that imprisonment makes people feel small even when they are stronger than perceived was better understood in the novel’s author, Sue Monk Kidd’s, version of