what is the major conflict and how is it solved???

major conflict · Motherless Lily lives unhappily with her emotionally detached father, who claims that Lily, as a small child, accidentally killed her mother. When her black maid—and only friend—Rosaleen gets arrested for confronting three racists, Lily decides to break Rosaleen out of jail. Together they run away to a place Lily suspects her mother once spent time.

The climax of The Secret Life of Bees occurs when Lily confronts T. Ray in the pink house. Throughout the novel, Lily has been struggling with who she is in relation to her mother’s death. In other words, Lily is having difficulty deciding what kind of woman she wants to be without the direction of a mother. As suggested in various epigraphs, Lily is wandering senselessly like a bee without a queen. When Lily confronts T. Ray she makes the decision not to live with him any longer. This decision is different than the one she made when she ran away because it is a permanent decision. It is also an informed decision. Lily realizes that T. Ray is a destructive person and that she cannot live subjected to his close-minded and cruel ways. This is an adult decision. In this scene Lily also learns, definitively, that she was responsible for her mother’s death. That Lily chases T. Ray in order to find out this information suggests she is prepared for the possibility that she has killed her mother. This turning point, in which Lily refuses to submit to T. Ray and prepares to reconcile the guilt she has for killing her mother, allows Lily to resolve her past and begin anew.

The resolution of the novel is that Lily replaces her “queen” and starts over. Throughout the novel, Lily has been in search of herself as much as she has been in search of her mother. Learning the truth about her mother--both that Deborah left her and that she was responsible for Deborah’s death--allows Lily to begin the process of forgiving them both. In forgiving, Lily is set free to start fresh. Because she freed herself from T. Ray, Lily gives herself the opportunity for a bright future and finally learns what it is like to be part of a loving family. Lily, who has been lost without a queen, finds a series of new queens in the new women in her life as well as in Mary.