Everything I Never Told You About Systems

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We encounter systems every day: The Solar System, the digestive system, the judicial system, and many more. Writing is no exception. Every piece of writing is a system, including this blog post. In a piece of writing many literary tools come together to deliver a message. When a piece of writing is not using literary tools efficiently, it may not convey the message that the author intended. But when an author succeeds in creating a system of literary tools connecting in one common purpose, it produces a brilliant piece of writing. One such piece of writing is Celeste Ng’s “Everything I Never Told You.” “Everything I never told you is the story of an Asian-American family going through one of the greatest struggles that a family can be subjected to: death.

        “Everything I Never Told You” is a very bleak, and emotionally heavy story. The reader doesn’t just feel as though they are being told what is happening in the story. Rather, the reader is completely immersed in the story and feels as though they are in the room with the Lee family. This intensifies the heartbreak and anger felt by characters in the book.

   

“Everything I never told you” fits the description of a literary system perfectly. The central story in “Everything I never told you” revolves around the Lee family. The system in “Everything I Nbever Told You” serves the purpose of emphasizing the hardships that the Lee family is suffering in the present day of the story, as well as the difficult challenges that they have had to undergo in the past.

The system uses many different methods to keep the reader engaged and feed them the  grim story. Celeste Ng uses many short sentences throughout the story. One such example is the very first sentence of the novel, “ Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.”(Ng, 1) It immediately hooks the reader and introduces them to the setting. It also hints at the chaos which is to come. It is these short sentences that Ng uses as a part of the whole system to progress the story.

Ng uses dialogue to help express the relationships between her characters, “‘Because you’re acting hysterical. You hear one news report and you let all these ideas go to your head. Let it go.’”(Ng, 115). James confronts Marilyn on her behavior, and it is clear that he is upset that Marilyn still cannot accept Lydia’s death.

Ng also creates moments when the character is having a conversation with themselves in their head. “[Marilyn] makes herself a promise. She will figure out what happened to Lydia. She will find out who is responsible. She will find out what went wrong.”(Ng, 76). Here, we are shown the beginnings of Marilyn's obsession with finding the truth behind her daughter’s death.

“Everything I never told you” is not consistent with its characters and its plot. Ng switches back and forth between characters, as well as time periods. This non-linear story line not only to a non-linear plot, but also a non-linear message and perception.

On many occasions Ng isolates Nathan’s relationship with Jack. “James glanced back over his shoulder and saw Jack peeking through the door from the pool area.” Nathan doesn’t notice that Jack was looking into the locker room, all he remembers is being embarrassed by Jack in the pool. Nathan has always hated Jack, even though there have been instances where Jack has been nice to him. Nathan hates him and that makes the reader hate him as well. But then the reader is shown that perhaps Jack doesn’t mean to be rude to Nathan or make fun of him, and suddenly the reader has to rethink their perception of Jack.

“Everything I Never Told You” is a system, a very efficient one as well; through the use of a large variety of literary tools, both subtle and grand, Celeste Ng immerses the reader in the world of the Lee family. “Everything I never Told You” is an excellent example of a literary system and how it functions.