Dysfunction Of Family System:Reading Evrything I Never Told You From The Perspective Of Family Systems Theory

Celeste Ng is an unique and outstanding Chinese American writer in the American literary field.Since the publication of her debut work Everything I Never Told You,Ng has attracted a lot of attention and is widely acclaimed.The novel Everything I Never Told You takes a small town,Middlewood,as the background and tells the tragedy of a mixed-race family with unique writing technique and plain writing style.Celeste Ng creates a Chinese American family which is trapped by the trauma of family of origin and societal background.This thesis intends to analyze the root of the family tragedy in Everything I Never Told You under the guidance of Murray Bowen’s family systems theory.The first part of the thesis focuses on the marital relationship between the husband James and the wife Marilyn in the Lee family,and intends to analyze their differentiation of self under the influence of their families of origin and social background respectively.The second chapter discusses the emotional interactions in the Lees’ nuclear family emotional system and analyzes how parents transmit anxiety through family projection process.The third chapter pays attention to Lydia’s low level of differentiation of self and her efforts to get rid of her emotional attachments to her family of origin.These findings not only clearly indicate the emotional interaction problems in this Chinese American family,but also reveal racial and gender discrimination in American society in the 1960 s and 1970 s.This study provides a new perspective for readers to explore the root of the tragedy from the macroscopic view of family,which helps readers to have a deep understanding of the emotional interaction within the Chinese American family and teaches some lessons for individuals in dealing with family relationships.