The Bee Sting

“Cass’s own effect was not electrifying, and when she told people that Imelda was her mother, they would stare at her a moment as if trying to solve a puzzle, then pat her hand sympathetically, and say, It’s after your father you take, so. Elaine said it wasn’t just about looks. Imelda also had mystique, magnetism.”

This quote further develops Cass’s characterization as an outcast. She is not beautiful like her mother, and lives under the shadow of her mother’s beauty in their small town. She must contend with the condescending commentary of her beloved Elaine, who notes Cass’s lack of magnetism. In response to this kind of constant disappointment, Cass believes this means she must leave to find an identity separate from that of her parents.

“People imagined poems were wispy things, she said, frilly things, like lace doilies. But in fact they were like claws, like the metal spikes mountaineers use to find purchase on the sheer face of a glacier. By writing a poem, the lady poets could break through the slippery, nothings surface of the life they were enclosed in, to the passionate reality that beat beneath it. Instead of falling down the sheer face, they could haul themselves up, line by line, until at last they stood on top of the mountain. And then maybe, just maybe, they might for an instant see the world as it really is.”

Cass’s influential teacher Miss Grehan portrays poetry as an empowering and aspirational creative outlet that gives women the opportunity to break free from society’s chains. Seeing literature in this light inspires Cass to become a poet. Although there is a lot of chaos in Cass’s life, poetry is a genuine passion and a talent that uplifts her.

“And watching her think that, she found herself thinking it too, and feeling it; and it seemed to her that that passion was very close, like a moon hidden in the brightness of the daytime sky, whose private gravity she could feel pulling her away from the earth.

Cass’s intense love for Elaine makes her interpret the world through Elaine’s perspective. This adoption of Elaine’s feeling and thoughts highlights is damaging, repressing Cass’s authentic self. This unreciprocated passionate love is clearly headed for heartbreak.

“We’re all that kind of person, Miss Grehan said. We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be. So many of the bad things that happen in the world come from people pretending to be something they’re not.”

This quote about authenticity and the masks defines most of the characters, who struggle to portray an inauthentic version of themselves to the world while hiding their true identities. As they succumb to societal expectations, which deem shameful certain sexual identities or intellectual interests, characters stoke internal conflicts that spill out onto those closest to them.

“Because even though he knows Dad would never ever steal from a customer or anybody else, there is still the terrible thought at the back of his mind that he might be wrong. Haven’t the last two years been a slow, methodical undoing of everything he ever thought was true? A slow transformation of his father into someone else, someone different? Looked at that way, doesn’t the very impossibility of Dad stealing—of Dad being anything other than wise and smart and good—make it inevitable? The last great reversal, the catastrophic final step?”

Dickie’s relationship with his son has changed dramatically. PJ used to see his father as wonderful, but now the stresses of Dickie’s life have taken a toll on Dickie’s outlook. This makes PJ learn a sad but valuable life lesson: People change, not always for the better. Ears’s accusation also prompts dramatic irony, a rhetorical device in which readers know more than the characters in a given moment: Here, PJ is shocked at the suggestion that his father would ever steal from his customers, but readers know that money has gone missing from an important account at the dealership. This foreshadows the future revelation that Dickie is in fact stealing from his business to cover his extortion.

“You’re a soft touch she’d tell him. You think Maurice got where he is forking out money to every sad sack that tries it on with him? But he couldn’t say no though she knew as soon as the money ran out they would turn on him Rich and poor alike And so they did They call him a fool now and they are right.”

Dickie is generous and kind—qualities that are antithetical to his father’s strengths, which are all about maintaining wealth and standing by not giving too much to others. However, this dichotomy does not have an easy moral accounting: Dickie’s kindness and generosity also makes him foolish and vulnerable. Imelda knows the value of money because she knows what the deprivation of poverty is really like, whereas Dickie has always been financially secure and therefore takes this kind of stability for granted.

“Cass goes off with a scowl with PJ limping after her Every time she looks at him now she sees his poor foot as it was in Arnotts blue-white and cut to ribbons she could have died of shame God if it will only come off with Maurice Imagine having money again! Imagine not worrying!”

The emotional problems of the Barnes family have grown alongside their financial struggles. PJ tries to keep his foot pain a secret because he doesn’t want to stress his mother about their finances; his blistered feet and her complete unawareness that he needs new shoes makes Imelda feel ashamed of failing as a mother.

“It’s as if someone or something is determined to make her see that it has been here all this time The hotel The past Waiting for her as long as it took That’s where the cake was There was the band Dickie sat on her right And across the table Rose Yes she remembers staring over at Rose through the veil Trying to catch her eye Rose looking away.”

The hotel in town is a symbol of Imelda’s tragic past. The hotel represents the beginning of her life with Dickie, which she never really wanted to have. The memories of what could have been—the marriage she could have had with Frank—haunt Imelda and make her withdraw from family life.

“Gone gone she snaps without knowing exactly what she means Except that out of nowhere her heart is battering against her chest and amid the sunlight streaming through the broad windows everything has gone dark and in her mind wherever it has come from is the terrible certainty that he is no longer here That the room has devoured him as the price for what happened that day The life she should never had had Now she will never see him again nor will anyone even know who she means when she speaks his name.”

Imelda’s stream-of-consciousness narration offers a dramatic change from the perspectives of the novel’s other characters. The device highlights her emotionality, characterizing her as a reactive and instinctive person. Here, we see Imelda’s maternal instinct react with fear and suspicion to PJ’s disappearance; Imelda senses that PJ is in danger despite not noticing that he has been struggling and not knowing about his involvement with a predatory stranger. Imelda’s guilt is multifaceted: The “he” here is both PJ and Frank—men she feels she has wronged.

“Everything okay? She says He gives her a smile And she flinches For what is it but her own lighthouse beam being shined back at her.”

Imelda’s “lighthouse beam” is a metaphor for the fake smile she puts on when she wants to hide her real, turbulent emotions; from a young age, Imelda has known how to use her beauty to soothe the violent men around her and how to repress her feelings for safety. PJ uses the same smile, which Imelda recognizes as signaling that something is very wrong and that he is hiding his true emotions.

“Clear as a bell she heard it and that was before she knew who he was or anything about him She didn’t know anything then But she could see well enough he was a self-made man A man on the up who would most definitely not let the likes of Imelda Caffrey drag down his family’s good name His son might find it romantic or entertaining to associate with outlaws He did not no sir And if there was a battle over it he would win.”

This characterization of Maurice through Imelda’s perspective highlights his power. Imelda has used Maurice’s influence over his sons to get her way with both Frank and Dickie by appealing to Maurice’s appreciation of her beauty and charisma. With Maurice as leader of the Barnes family, the only one who can dole out approval, permission, and support, Frank and Dickie can never develop autonomy. In contrast, Imelda is savvy—she knows how to play on Maurice for the sake of her needs.

“If she hadn’t had her stupid plan If they hadn’t fought If instead she kissed him goodbye and he’d gone home and slept deep and dreamless and woken refreshed might he have kept his feet and scored the point and saved the match and proved Maurice wrong and been carried through the town a hero instead of sitting in a half-empty bar taking the long view? She wondered She would wonder for the rest of her life.”

This novel is interested in how seemingly small decisions and actions have a profound impact on the grand scheme of life. Here, Imelda considers how much different choices—such as kissing Frank instead of fighting with him—could have affected the dramatic outcome. Her lived experience is full of regret and marked by guilt and self-doubt. Imelda feels like she has little control and autonomy in her life; wondering if she could have changed the course of her and Frank’s life is trying to magically think that autonomy into existence.

“Yet isn’t it possible that from this tragedy something good could still come?”

Dickie’s perspective on Imelda’s unexpected pregnancy highlights his positive thinking and generosity. Dickie is kind and seeks to see good in others. His brother’s death leads—strangely—to Dickie taking over what would have been Frank’s life. He chooses to imagine that inhabiting Frank’s marriage is making something good out of tragedy.

“He didn’t idolize him In fact I’m not sure he even liked him very much But everyone else liked Frank and that’s what Dickie wanted for himself He wanted to be the boy that everyone liked But he was very clever and very complicated and you can’t be clever and complicated and have everyone like you.”

Dickie’s relationship with Frank is an odd mixture of competition and love. Dickie wants what Frank has—his star power, charisma, and athleticism—but he also appreciates and values his brother. In contrast, Dickie as clever, complicated, and therefore more difficult to like—qualities that are not prized in their community and ensure the loneliness Dickie hides from his family.

“It had been stupid of him to assume that, simply because he didn’t fit in at home, he would fit in here. What was it, after all, but the very small-town naivety he thought he was above?”

Dickie’s isolation stems from the fact that he doesn’t fit in anywhere, which heightens his low self-esteem and makes him withdraw from company. This quote highlights Dickie’s loneliness and lack of belonging.

“But in life, he discovered, parenthood was like—it was—living with a person. A new person, with strong opinions, strong tastes, arbitrary swings of emotion, all of them addressed at you. You were the passive one: the work of care was primarily to endure, to weather the endless, buffeting storms of unmediated will.”

This novel is at its core about functional and dysfunctional family dynamics. As fulfilling as fatherhood is for Dickie, it is also complicated because it involves having relationships with people that are different from him. Dickie sees his children as individuals developing their own personas, even if that comes at his expense. The use of the storm metaphor here emphasizes Dickie’s kind patience in the face of his children’s transformations as they grow up.

“Dickie felt overshadowed by Frank. Frank was their father’s favorite; Frank was everyone’s favorite, apart from their mother, who obviously preferred Dickie only out of pity and so didn’t count. There was no mystery to it. Frank was bonny and boyish, with an open, sunny face, a snub nose, freckles, buck teeth. He was full of mischievous energy…nobody seemed to mind when Frank did something wrong.”

Murray highlights the competition between Frank and Dickie. Dickie has long held a complex about Frank, which has greatly influenced his identity and sense of self. The admiration people have for Frank and their disrespect of Dickie makes the older brother internalize inferiority.

“After the pleasure, he sometimes hated Willie. It happened against his will, like he’d drunk a potion: he felt himself transforming, shriveling, into a cold, sclerotic old hag. In those moments, he’d simultaneously hate Willie for loving him, and despise him for pretending to do so: though nothing so much as he despised and hated himself.”

Dickie has low self-esteem developed from years of living in Frank’s shadow. Dickie doesn’t even have friends, so when Willie gives Dickie affection and happiness, Dickie doesn’t know how to receive this unexpected love and finds that he doesn’t trust Willie’s emotions. The “hatred” Dickie feels is really his dislike of himself.

“Those first years were the hardest. Her education was minimal. She believed the earth revolved around the equator, that Jews were born with an extra finger. She had a plethora of saints she prayed to…That is: he was often lonely. But that only undergirded his sense of duty. What is love, only duty, absolution?”

Dickie and Imelda are very different: Coming from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds, they have contrasting relationships to money; because of their different levels of access to culture and resources, their levels of education are also mismatched. Thus, Dickie has a life partner with whom he can’t connect. However, for Dickie, this lack of connection feels like punishment—one he believes he deserves. This quote captures how unhappy Dickie is in life, how lonely he is in his marriage, and his skewed belief about what love should be.

“You become pure presence. You are diffused among the trees, in the ground, the air, the water. You wake every morning in a clearing damp with dew, leaves glistening around you, ferns and bushes still vigorously growing, reaching out of themselves: all is changing continuously, and yet you feel outside of time, released from it, living instead in a single verdant moment. Every day the earth seems new, you too are new.”

Dickie becomes obsessed with his survivalist project, feeling as one with nature the more he spends time in the woods. Dickie finds solace in nature because it makes him feel active, at peace, and hopeful. This quote emphasizes the important connection between people and the environment, a connection that is being threatened by the climate change that frightens Dickie and Cass.

“But nothing becomes clear, and the cowardly part of you tells you that by confessing you risk losing everything, while what you have with her now—where you hide your feelings but get to share her life—may be the best you can hope for. Stay quiet, it tells you.”

Cass is struggling in Dublin; her relationship with Elaine has become untenable because Cass is in love and Elaine does not reciprocate this feeling. This passage depicts Cass’s internal conflict as she vacillates between telling Elaine her true feelings and staying quiet to preserve what friends is left. This internal conflict parallels Cass with her father, who also hides his sexuality.

“Like, is it that things are just supposed to go their own way and you basically can’t do anything to stop them and if you do it’ll just make everything way worse? Or is it worth taking the risk? Sometimes?”

PJ’s internal conflict is whether he should try to solve his family’s problems even though he doesn’t fully understand what they are. This quote depicts PJ’s uncertainty about the nature of will and control, which is also a larger question that Murray asks throughout the novel.

“Here’s a fact about the universe, maybe the number one fact: it’s impossible to comprehend how much it doesn’t care about us. It’s not just that it doesn’t care about Life. It doesn’t even care about matter. Everything we think of as everything…that’s only a miniscule fraction of the universe.”

PJ is characterized through his love of facts. Yet his vast array of knowledge doesn’t help him fix his family, causing PJ to feel hopeless and nihilistic. This is an important character development: PJ, a child who represents innocence, grows embittered by the lack of structure and love in his family.