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Themes In Everything I Never Told You

Decent Essays

In the book Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng, the Lee family the only Chinese family in their Ohio town loses their daughter Lydia, the main character to “suicide”, but then later find out that it wasn’t as the story unravels. Each family member tells their version on the story and the narrator Lydia’s version. Each version of Lydia’s death and her story varies from each person, each one revealing different secrets about the family and Lydia that would help to unravel her murder mystery. With this suspense and emotions felt through the pages, it is as if the Lee family was your own, by the way Ng is able to capture the reader's emotions, which is why Everything I Never Told You is a significant piece of literature.
The sadness of not being able to accomplish a goal can sometimes ruin your life or someone else’s. Marilyn, the main character's mother pressures Lydia into accomplishing her life goal of becoming a doctor just like her mother wanted to accomplish her life goal because her future was decided by fate and her own mother. Marilyn says, “For the rest of her life, this would be what Marilyn thought of first when she thought of her mother. Her mother who had never left her hometown eighty miles from Charlottesville, who always wore gloves outside the house, and who never, in the 81 years Marilyn could remember, sent her to school without a hot breakfast. Who never mentioned Marilyn’s father after he left, but raised her alone. Who, when Marilyn earned a

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