As something we've covered in great detail recently, forgiveness is something that we immediately look for as a theme in any of these works, and sure enough, it's right in the middle of The Secret Life of Bees.
The biggest issue with forgiveness involves Lily and her mother's death. Her abusive father, who wasn't a very nice person to start with, never forgave Lily for accidentally killing his wife, and treats her like a murderer. Lily can't even forgive herself for shooting her mom, and quite possibly can't forgive Terrance for fighting with Deborah, necessitating the gun and leading to her death. It's hard to tell where Lily blames him for Deborah's death and where it's just about Terrance being a poor father, but since she refuses to call him by name, she still hasn't forgiven him for something.
In fact, while everyone seems to hold some sort of grudge for one another, no one has tried to forgive, everyone preferring to stew in their grudges. It's not even like in The Sunflower, where the soldier recognized that he had done wrong and sought forgiveness. No instead Terrance keeps trying to hold a child at fault for a mistake, Lily slides by under the banner of youth, she can't be expected to understand the complexity of the situation and come to terms with it.
Forgiveness comes up again, along with race, in the events around Rosaleen. For racism to be ended, it takes forgiveness on the side of the victim. As for the perpetrator, it takes forgetting their prejudice, and forgiveness and forgetting are closely related as we examined in class. In this case I'm stretching the relationship a bit, but it takes both parties to reconcile their differences in order to overcome them, just as forgiveness does but to only the victim.
While there are many forms of forgiveness, I should probably specify that the one I'm using in all of these scenarios means "to cease to feel resentment against". Note that it doesn't require retribution, or justice, or any sort action on the aggressor's part. Forgiveness is wholly personal, and while it might make a person feel better to be forgiven, that is not built into the definition of forgiveness. Forgiveness allows the victim to see unclouded by emotion, once the hatred and resentment has been removed, they can act appropriately in situations with the one(s) who has wronged them.
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