Disclaimer: If you have read the book Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, keep on reading. If you have not, keep on reading anyway.
In May, 1977, several police officers drag an oriental girl out of a lake in Middletown Ohio, followed by the gradual collapse of a family. A story of struggling with identity, Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng leads the reader through an emotional turmoil along with the Lee family when suddenly confronted by the unexplained death of Lydia Lee, their second child.
Ng alternates between different stages of the family, presenting the heartfelt helplessness of each character as well as revealing the outright racism at that time. As Lydia’s death sounds the alarm, Marilyn and James will soon discover the underlying fractures within the family. Their intricate relationships with each other (and with Lydia) construct a system––an extremely fragile one.
A system in general includes several interdependent mechanisms made up by different elements. With this specific story, the characters serve as the elements that create relationships, the mechanisms inside a system. In a system, the malfunction of one element causes the mechanisms and, eventually, the whole system to collapse, just as how Lydia’s lies and later, death, break all other elements apart and weakens the character’s relationship with each other.
Despite her title as “the favourite,” Lydia constantly pushes her siblings and parents away, loosening all ties with her family. She presents to her family a carefully crafted image of herself, one that confirms her parents’ perfect perception of her. To conceal her loneliness, Lydia spends hours sitting on the window seat with the phone in her lap, pretending to share gossip with her “friends,” only to be greeted with the echo of her own voice or the “low drone of the dial tone.” She talks, or lies, about those “friends” with a “stillness” on her face so undoubtable that not even her parents suspect. The countless times when Lydia asks to hang out with her friends, James permits with a ten-dollar bill and without further inquiry.
When Marilyn searches through Lydia’s backpack, she immediately rejects the idea of “her Lydia” doing anything like that: “My Lydia would never...” As Marilyn digs closer to the truth, Lydia’s “[wavered]” image will be completely shattered.
Indeed, “so fussed over, so carefully tended,” Lydia is the “prize flower” to Marilyn and James; however, she clearly views her relationship with her parents as unworthy of the truth, as she chooses Jack, a complete player stranger who “ran wild,” over her parents.
Soon, as Lydia disappears from their lives, James and Marilyn will find their relationship rapidly deteriorating. For the couple, their children serve as both an adhesive––to keep the family together––and a major source of conflict, not to mention the inherent differences in their ideals: one who stands out wants to blend in while the other who blends in perfectly craves to stand out.
Marilyn’s children represent everything she has accomplished. They carry the weight of everything that she has given up for James: her degree, her youth, her goals, and her future as a respected professional “striding across the hospital waiting room.” For the sake of her family, she has ended up like her mother, someone she despises. Her self-perceived value crumbles as Lydia is found dead, erasing every single sacrifice she made for her daughter along the way for sixteen years.
As frustration develops into “fury,” she vents her dissatisfaction toward James in the most painful way and attacks his identity, blaming him for “[kowtowing].” “The word rifles from his wife’s mouth and lodges deep in his chest.” James has always thought of Marilyn as someone special, someone who fully accepts his differences, but her harsh comment proves otherwise. This word “kowtow” forces him to face his deepest insecurity: his race. By doing so, Marilyn has created a irrevocable rift in her relationship with James.
Moreover, considering the gravity of her daughter’s death, Marilyn’s anger will continue to fall on James, along with the pressure of protecting the family. As a human being, James needs a haven for his mind to “[go] blissfully blank.” When he can no longer seek comfort from Marilyn, he spontaneously approaches someone else who can provide him “a dreamless sleep”; in this case, Louisa is the new element replacing Marilyn. As long as Marilyn’s wound is unhealed, her anger will aggravate the existing estrangement with her husband, impairing their relationship and consequently, the system of their family.
Although the analogy of a system and the Lee’s appears inappropriate and abrupt, their relation can be proven gradually, starting from an element’s malfunction. Hopefully, the new element does not permanently take the position of an indirectly affected element, as costs always exist in replacements; and the mechanism will soon adapt to operating without the faulted element by learning to rely on and cooperate with each other. (That basically means hopefully, everything will be fine).
