An Analysis of the Main Characters’ Trauma in Everything I Never Told You_英语论文

摘要

2014年出版的《无声告白》是伍绮诗耗时六年所写的一部处女作。《无声告白》这部小说以二十世纪七十年代的美国为背景，描写了一个涉及种族歧视、家庭矛盾、性别问题等不同生活面的悲剧故事。虽然整个故事是围绕玛丽琳一家来展开描述的，但同时也是折射了在那个时代人们普遍对种族的歧视和对跨种族婚姻的禁忌的现象，从而加速了故事悲剧的发生。

作者伍绮诗通过采取迂回倒叙的方法慢慢呈现给读者莉迪亚从失踪直到被确认死亡的整个过程，从中呈现了三个孩子在这个家庭中不同的角色地位及其各自性格的差异。本篇论文将通过对跨族裔家庭中五个主要家庭成员创伤的分析：放弃逐梦的玛丽琳、 陷入文化困境的詹姆斯、成长缺乏父爱的内斯、沉默反抗的莉迪亚和被一家人忽视的汉娜，并探讨造成莉迪亚、内斯、汉娜三个人物创伤形成的原因，更重要的是，反映出此作品对后世的影响，即唤起人们对于家庭教育、种族歧视问题等的重视。

关键词: 莉迪亚 内斯 汉娜 创伤 跨族裔家庭 

Abstract

Everything I Never Told You, published in 2014, took Celeste Ng six years to complete. The novel is set in America in the 1970s, which depicts a tragic story involving racial discrimination, family conflicts and gender issues. Although the book mainly describes Marilyn and her family, it also reflects the racial discrimination and taboos against interracial marriage of the vast majority in that era, thus accelerating the tragedy. The author unfolds the whole story from the disappearance of the eldest daughter Lydia to the confirmation of her death through a circuitous flashback and shows the different roles and characters of the three children in the family. This paper will emphatically analyze the trauma of the five main members in the interracial family, exploring the factors for the traumas among Lydia, Nathan and Hannah. What’s more, the present paper intends to reflect the impact of this work for the later generations, that is, evoking more individuals’ attention to family education, racial discrimination and other issues.

Key words: Lydia  Nath  Hannah  trauma  interracial family 

Contents

Chapter One  Introduction. 1

1.1  Introduction to Celeste Ng. 1

1.2  Introduction to Everything I Never Told You.1 

1.3  Purpose of the Thesis. 3

Chapter Two  Literature Review. 4

2.1  Introduction 4

2.2  Previous Studies on Everything I Never Told You 4

2.3  Previous Study on Trauma Theory6

2.4  Our Comment7

Chapter Three  Theoretical Framework. 8

3.1  Introduction 8

3.2  Trauma Theory. 8

Chapter Four  An Analysis of the Main Characters’ Trauma in Everything I Never Told You .10 

4.1  Introduction.10

4.2  An Aspiring Woman Who Abandons Her Dream—Marilyn.10

4.3  An Ethnic Chinese Trapped in Cultural Predicament—James11

4.4  Growing up without Fatherly Love—Nath 12

4.5  The Center of the Cosmos and Silent Repression—Lydia13

4.6  The Hollow Man at Home—Hannah. 14

Chapter Five  Factors Contributing to the Three Children’s Trauma. 16

5.1  Social Environment . 16

5.2  Family. 17

Chapter Six  Conclusion. 19

Bibliography

Acknowledgements