A Study Of Trauma In Everything I Never Told You

Everything I Never Told You is a long debut written by Celeste Ng.The novel was highly praised and won more than ten awards.Celeste Ng revealed the love and contradictions in a multi-ethnic family.Starting with Lydia’s death,this thesis analyzes the trauma symptoms on the basis of the trauma and recovery theory,and further explores the causes of Lydia and her family’s trauma,as well as the efforts Lydia and her family made to get out of the trauma.There are five chapters in the thesis.The first chapter mainly introduces the research status of Celeste Ng and Everything I Never Told You,the framework of trauma theory,and the purpose and significance of the study.The second chapter analyzes the trauma symptoms,namely the fear of being abandoned and social phobia.The third chapter explores the causes of the trauma experiences from the aspects of family,society and Lydia’s own contradictions.The fourth chapter mainly explores the efforts Lydia,her family and the society made to struggle out the traumatic experience.The last chapter draws a conclusion that Lydia’s death was an extreme manifestation of her traumatic experience,her family and the multi-ethnic society.Everyone in the novel was giving love,everyone was a victim,and at the same time,everyone was responsible for the tragedy.Disharmonious husband-wife relationship,parents’ unbalanced love to the children and racial discrimination were the secondary causes leading to the family’s traumatic experiences and Lydia’s death,while the root cause of Lydia’s death was that she lost herself in her parents’ high expectations.Although she died,she finally reconstructed herself at the end of her life.In spite of the grief and regret,the family began to reflect.The family actively communicated with each other and bravely expressed their love.The social and media also showed sympathy and gave help to the family.With the active efforts of all parties,the family finally got out of the traumatic memory and started a new life.The traumatic experience in Everything I Never Told You is not only the highly concentrated traumatic experience of American ethnic groups,but also a true portrayal of the spiritual dilemma of people in modern society.Ng’s reflection on family education,on the relationship between husband and wife,parents and child,and her exploration of ways to treat the trauma also provide reference to people who have similar experience in real life.