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Analysis Of Celeste Ng 's Everything I Never Told You And Mark Haddon 's The Curious Incident Of The Dog

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Question: Through investigation of the two texts, how are you more conscious of the world and your place in it?

The universal power of fiction is often a vehicle for readers to be transported to countless times and locations intrinsically, prompting reflections of both themselves and their world. Through the comparison of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, it becomes evident that the notion of loss has the potential to transform an individual’s perspective of the world and their place in it. The two novels investigate the tragic loss of family in detail and as a corollary of familial abandonment and death, loss of trust is endured by the protagonists and their peers. Despite both being written in the 21st century, Everything I Never Told You and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time probe at the notion of loss in dramatically different ways, due to cultural and social disparities. Ng’s elite academic American upbringing (Birnbaum, 2015) contrasts vastly with Haddon’s humble British background working with autistic people (GoodReads, Unknown). The two novels’ differences and similarities in their explorations of loss provide an even profounder consciousness of the world and the roles individuals play within it.

Within both Everything I Never Told You and The Curious Incident, the influence of loss on an individual’s perspective is examined thoroughly. Ng’s novel considers the notion of

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