The Murmur of Bees

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-20

Chapters 21-50

Chapters 51-76

Chapters 77-100

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Background

Historical Context: Early 20th-Century Mexico

Mexico saw dramatic change in the 1920s as the industrial revolution made great advances in available technology. While many of these developments had already impacted more urbanized areas, mechanization was just taking hold in the agricultural state of Nuevo León. In the novel, Francisco Senior is the first landholder in the Linares area to have a tractor. Technological advancement made its way into the homes of the privileged too, as evident in Beatriz’s massive Singer sewing machine and in Francisco’s including internal plumbing and partial electricity in designing their new home in Monterrey. The advent of telephones in personal dwellings, as Beatriz notes in the novel, was on the horizon. The agrarian reform movement, coupled with the industrialization of cities like Monterrey, drew an increasing number of the landowner class into urban areas and commercial businesses, and away from agriculture—a drift that in the novel eventually draws Francisco Junior away from agriculture.

Beatriz wonders why such dramatic advances haven’t made life any less worrisome. Cultural foment, changing laws, and multiple military groups resulted in pervasive uncertainty and nostalgia for the simpler decades of the past. That nostalgia, however, exists only among landowners and other upper-class citizens like the Morales family. The dramatic developments of the age offer little change for the lower-class worker, apart from engendering animosity at the great gap between the classes and a desire for greater equality. Wandering groups of displaced campesinos and former soldiers move throughout the wilderness and farming areas. This stokes the landowners’ response, the rural guard, which further enflames tensions and heightens the disparity between the classes.

Ultimately, Segovia’s description of this period, as expressed through the thoughts of Beatriz, is intended to convey the remarkable similarity between the cultural realities of that day and today. Just as in 1920s Mexico, throughout today’s world there are amazing technological advances in communication, transportation, industrial mechanization, and agriculture—and today’s society is polarized between entrenched groups seeking either a return to the assumed security and clarity of previous generations or the end of class disparity.

Historical Context: The Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution is one of two major events that provide a backdrop for the narrative and impact its progression. The revolution began in 1910, and the conflict played out over the following 10 years, with various armed groups rising up, uniting with other groups, and then breaking away to form new alliances. A new constitution was eventually instituted, though the government remained under the military’s control for another 40 years, after which a single political party controlled the presidency for more than 30 years. Ultimately, the disparity between the social classes that initially sparked the revolution is still evident in virtually all aspects of Mexican culture.

For the characters in The Murmur of Bees, the revolution was a constant concern because of the uncertainty it generated. When the federal army shows up and requisitions Francisco’s newly harvested maize, he’s compelled to comply, and he wonders what else might be confiscated. Francisco and Beatriz send their daughters to a Catholic girls’ school in Monterrey, theorizing that they’ll be safer there from brigands roaming the countryside. However, these groups don’t disappear when the revolution ends. In addition, the agrarian reforms after the revolution create a direct threat to Francisco’s lands. The newly instituted constitution provides open-ended changes to property laws—overseen by questionable, extralegal groups—and thus threaten the confiscation of Francisco’s farms. By planting orange groves, Francisco manages to thwart the law requiring all farmland to be in constant cultivation, though he perceives that roving bands of disaffected men may threaten his property and family. For him, even the end of the war offers no peaceful resolution.

Historical Context: The Spanish Influenza Epidemic

The narrative’s second major contextual backdrop is the Spanish flu pandemic that began just as the revolution wound down. The pandemic forces more dramatic, immediate changes on the characters than the revolution. While Segovia indicates that the pandemic lasted only three months in the region, the disease upsets the social norms, inhibiting the formal rites of death, burial, and mourning. The city becomes a shuttered community, where the streets are lined each morning with the dead—and the not-yet dead—wrapped in shrouds. When the pandemic subsides, the recovery transforms the Linares community by bringing in a new cast of residents and workers with whom the Morales family must interact: a new postmaster (who doesn’t know where patrons live), a new priest, and a new gravedigger.

In the face of the pandemic, the Morales family begins to recognize Simonopio’s mystic abilities. Feigning sickness, he prevents the family from attending the first super-spreader event. Because he recognizes the emotional needs of family members, Simonopio teaches Francisco how to provide for Beatriz. Just as the pandemic causes Beatriz and Francisco to value Simonopio more, it causes Anselmo to hate him more and vow to kill him. Anselmo believes Simonopio brought the flu, which resulted in the deaths of most members of Anselmo’s family. The campesino also believes Francisco Senior singled out Anselmo’s family to remain behind and watch over their hacienda out of disrespect, rather than owning the reality that Anselmo sealed his family’s fate by sending his wife into the infected town to buy tobacco.

Many perceive Segovia’s narrative as prescient. Her description of the pandemic’s spread, the wildly varying reactions to it within the community, and the manner in which society changed during and after the scourge ironically mirrors the COVID-19 pandemic in many respects.