The burden of knowing

I believe that in this novel, there are a few characters that are suffering from the burden of knowing. I guess from these examples, the phrase can be true when it is said, “Ignorance is bliss.” Sometimes knowing a thing can do more harm than it would, had we just remained in the dark. But we are curious creatures, and many times our curiosity gets the better of us. Also at times, the feeling of not knowing plagues us so bad, that we do all in our power to know, even if we know it could potentially hurt us. What is better for us really depends on the situation. I think that character that suffered the most from the burden of knowing is Lily. The burden had started once she found out as a little girl that she accidently shot and killed her mother. I don’t believe such a burden should have been placed on such a young girl, but due to the hatred she had received from her father, he had kept that memory alive and well in her mind. And so with this burden that she had had, although it was purely an accident, and not really her fault the gun was near her in the first place, she had guilt to deal with. I think that another thing that made this even more of a burden was her thoughts that maybe if her mother was still alive, life would be so much easier for all of them. And so then she has the burden of knowing that her mother isn’t there, and can not be there, all because of an accident, in which she was the cause. But she still had a desire to know about her mother while she was alive. She knew that one of the bee keeping sisters, mainly August, might have the answers that she was looking for. Once she found more about her mother, she then had the burden of knowing that what her father had been telling her for so many years actually was true, that her mother really had left her for a time. Another character in the novel that really suffered from the burden of knowing was May. Even if what she had heard about wasn’t related to her in even the slightest sense, just her knowing would send her into a fit of tears. This obviously had happened so much, because the sisters seemed to be used to it, and would routinely ask her or take her outside where she could empty out her emotions at her “wailing wall.” These experiences came about from the knowledge that her sister April had shot herself a long while back. The other sisters got along with life find in spite of it, but May was just never the same after this had happened. Within the story, I think the burden of knowing might have affected May in the very greatest sense. In the end she felt as though she could no longer deal with all of the sadness, and she ended up taking her own life.