Comparatives between Holes and the Secret Life of Bees (Essay Sample)

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Comparatives between Holes and the Secret Life of Bees
The Secret Life of Bees is a story about a young girl who lives with her father. Lily's father is a peach farmer in Sylvan, in South Carolina. As the book opens, Lily lies in bed, waiting for the bees in in her bedroom's wall to emerge and fly around the room as it happened most of the nights. Her father, T. Ray, is abusive and does not believe Lily's story about the bees. Rosaleen, her housekeeper and nanny believes in her story but thinks she is foolish for trying to collect the bees and keep them in the room in a jar. Lily has spent most of her time in her life longing for her mother, Deborah. Deborah died amid mysterious circumstances when she was only four years old. Her father tells her that she killed Deborah accidentally.
On the other hand, Holes is a story about a boy by the name Stanley Yelnats, who was sent to a juvenile detention center for the boys. The boys in this juvenile center called Camp Green Lake; have to do an unusual thing in there. They were to dig a hole five feet in depth and five feet in width every day. The place they dig in Camp Green Lake is called a lake. The place where the holes are dug, is a tiring surface due to it being all dried up. Each day seems to get tougher for him. But soon enough, it stops. He gets used to the daily routine in the center, and although the days are swelteringly hot and they normally empty their water bottles, the holes digging start to get easier.
Eventually, Stanley realizes that they were digging those holes because the warden is in search of something. As Stanley continues to dig holes with the boys at the correction center, the narrator is quick to intertwine three separate stories to reveal why Stanley's family had the curse and what the center warden was looking for.On the other hand, Lily having been raised by her nanny Rosaleen, she is very much determined to save her from jail. In addition, she is also determined to finally escape from her own father. The two are able to flee from jail and from the father, and set out across South California in the search for a new life.
The story as narrated in Holes portrays the element of racism in the United States. Sam and Katherine Barlow fall in love but they cannot kiss because they do not belong to the same race and it is against the law. People in the town become irate when they find out that Sam and Cate have kissed. Charles, the richest man in the town wanted to marry Katherine and become mad when he realized that Katherine was dating Sam. In response they attempt to escape but their boat is destroyed when they were half away in crossing the lake and Sam is killed. The narrator here tries to expound the harm that comes about due to racism.
Katherine is driven mad by the grief of the demise of Sam and become an outlaw named Kissin' Kate Barlow. This referred to the fact that she kills the men she kisses. In her over twenty years of robbing people in the West, she steals from Stanley's great-grandfather's money while he was on his way to California from New York. She was tortured but never revealed where she hidden the money. She finally dies before anyone can find out where the money is.
In The Secret of Bees, we find that Lily and Rosaleen manage to escape and they land in South Carolina in a town called Tiburon. This is a town they know nothing about. The narrator goes ahead to show that their determination to succeed was not futile. They are taken in by three beekeeping sister from the same race as Rosaleen. These sisters worship the Black Madonna. It is in this place where Lily makes the passage to completeness and a new life. The narrator expounds on how Rosaleen and Lily manage to make a living in South Carolina and adapt to the new environment in the determination for a new life, which however, comes with a lot of challenges.
The narrator of Holes takes us through a series of events that happens subsequently, leading to the realization of the secrets of the Warden. When the Green Lake dries up, the people move out of the place and relocates. Stanley had a hard time digging the land due to the incredible heat and the hard land surface. In his effort to dig up holes he once finds a lipstick tube and started to believe that Kate Barlow used to live i...