Birds and Flight

Since this novel focuses on bees and beekeeping, you probably won't be surprised to hear that flight is kind of a big deal here. However, even beyond the bees, it's actually pretty amazing how many references to other things that fly (e.g., planes, rocket ships, birds, etc.) the novel crams in.

Some of these references coincide with moments of feeling free. For example, Lily has kind of an out-of-body experience with the bees in which she goes from feeling kind of panicky to having the sense that she's flying with them:

My breath came faster, and something coiled around my chest and squeezed tighter and tighter, until suddenly, like somebody had snapped off the panic switch, I felt myself go limp. My mind became unnaturally calm, as if part of me had lifted right up out of my body and was sitting on a tree limb watching the spectacle from a safe distance. The other part of me danced with the bees. I wasn't moving a lick, but in my mind I was spinning through the air with them. I had joined the bee conga line. (8.110)

In this moment, Lily really allows herself to let go, resulting in a feeling of exhilaration/and liberation. The bees are part of that process and, in fact, might be symbolic of it.

However, sometimes the novel's references to flight are a bit muddier, symbolically speaking. Take, for example, a moment soon after Lily and Rosaleen go on the lam, in which Lily is looking for a sign for what to do. She vows to take a few steps, look up, and take whatever she sees as a sign. That "whatever" ends up being a crop dusting plane that's spraying pesticides. She's not sure how to interpret that particular omen, lamenting:

I couldn't decide what part of this scene I represented: the plants about to be rescued from the bugs or the bugs about to be murdered by the spray. There was an off chance I was really the airplane zipping over the earth creating rescue and doom everywhere I went. (3.25)

This image of flight is a little "up in the air," as it were—it could have represented liberation or "doom," as far as Lily was concerned.

This moment highlights an interesting aspect of this symbol's role in the book: Sometimes flight is presented extremely positively, and other times not so much. Pay attention to when this symbol changes function, and consider why...