Lydia's Identity Crisis in Everything I Never Told You

摘要

Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You narrates a tragedy that occurred in a cross-ethnic family in the 1960s. This paper focuses on Lydia's social, family and campus life environment on the strength of Erickson's theory of self-identity and personality to analyze Lydia's identity crisis. Racism and feminist movement confused Lydia's sense of self-belonging and self-values, which gave rise to her identity crisis. Parents' exceptional expectations of Lydia and her excessive dependence on her brother also caused Lydia's self-differentiation and self-unity obstacles, resulting in her identity crisis. Finally, with Erickson's self-identity theory, this paper analyzes Lydia's obstacles to self-cognition for abnormal heterosexual emotion and alienated peer relationship. The exploration of Lydia's identity crisis will help further interpret the theme of race, gender and self-cognition revealed in the novel.