Research Paper on:
Equating the Concept of Power to Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Secret Life of Bees”

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
conclusion since political theorists have applied a negative connotation to power ever since Niccolo Machiavelli evaluated its merits (and also memorably pointed out its detriments) in his classic 1513 treatise,  The Prince. Power represents the ultimate control over something, whether it is a person, group, or institution. Power is like an intoxicating drug that cannot completely satisfy an  insatiable appetite. Some is never quite enough, and yet absolute power can never be assured because there is always someone or something that threatens its base, no matter how  strong the structural foundation. In Sue Monk Kidds novel, The Secret Life of Bees, the setting is the rural South during the summer of 1964. It is no  coincidence that President Lyndon B. Johnson just signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2. This has a significant impact on the power dynamic of  Southern society with blacks eager to exercise their newfound legal, social, and political power while disgruntled whites are not about to give up their dominance without a fight. As the  novels title clearly indicates, bees represent the predominant metaphor. It opens with a quote from the text, Man and Insects, which states, "The queen, for her part, is the  unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable  signs of queenlessness" (Quoted in Kidd 1). This illustrates the essence of power, and how it is quickly associated with an individual as it is with the queen in  a community of bees. With power there is unity and stability, and without it, there is chaos and anarchy. But when the other workers get a taste of