Everything I Never Told You and Kitchen Comparative Essay How do your two novels express the issue of loss and how it affects an individual and their place in the world? Literature is a significant and valued part of the world we live in, and allows readers to obtain a deeper understanding of issues that effect individuals, as well as the world. Through the two novels Everything I Never Told You and Kitchen, readers are able to gain an insight into how experiencing loss can help an individual to understand themselves and the people around them. In Everything I Never Told You, experiencing loss profoundly impacts each member of the Lee family, and enables them to understand themselves and their family as a collective whole. In Kitchen, the loss of her grandmother strongly influences …show more content…
Although written in differing contexts - Everything I Never Told You, written in 21st century America but set in the 1970s, and Kitchen, written and set in 1980s Japan, both novels explore the notion of loss and how it affects an individual. Within the texts Everything I Never Told You and Kitchen, the idea that loss enables an individual to gain a deeper understanding of themselves, is represented in similar yet contrasting ways. In Everything I Never Told You, literary techniques and context combine to allow the reader further insight into the way loss enables individuals to understand themselves. Firstly, Ng's manipulation of narrative time structure slowly unravels each family member’s past by jumping back and forth from past to present. By focusing on Lydia’s parents - James and Marilyn Lee’s past, it allows the reader to understand their history and motives. This is overviewed in the quote, “How had it begun? Like everything: with mothers and fathers. Because more than anything, her mother had wanted to stand out; because more than anything, her father had wanted to blend in. Because those things had been impossible.” This is referring to the social context