Character Analysis: Everything I Never Told You

Words: 507
Pages: 3

Dealing with their own blossoming inner conflicts, the Lee’s household could not have gotten more dysfunctional than they did the summer of Lydia’s sixteenth birthday when she was found drowned in the lake. Celeste NG, author of the heart-aching novel, Everything I Never Told You, beautifully stitches painful memories of the past together, revealing secrets and events leading up to the death of the naturally outcasted, sixteen year old girl, Lydia.

For the Lee family fitting in has never come easily, not for the father figure James, not for the eldest son Nath (short for Nathan), and especially not for the middle child, sixteen year old Lydia.

Lydia with her mother’s striking blue eyes and her father’s jet black hair and chinese facial
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Fitting in at school was a struggle for Nath as well, he often remained alone and invested himself in his classwork in attempt to take his mind off the glares and unnecessary comments. While at home, was no joyride either, with his once so openly expressed love for astronomy, stunned, Nath came to realise his parents whole-heartedly invested their hopes and dreams into his younger sister Lydia. He realised that the world revolved around Lydia.

The chain of alienation started with the father figure, James. For James it was tough being an oriental figure who taught the subject of Cowboys in American history at a school made up purely of white folks. At his first lesson the murmur of the crowd grew louder with each second that ticked by, followed by the the footsteps of students walking out of his lesson every other minute or so.

The good thing that came out of his first lesson was that he met a young lady who would soon become his wife, Marilyn, which for a short while the relationship between James and Marilyn resembled a symbol of acceptance. However, at their wedding the feeling that was all too familiar to James, a sense of displacement came rushing back when Marilyn’s mother disapproved of James’s race and wished her daughter to marry a white folk like