Celeste Ng’s Recipe To Write a Tragedy

Three seemingly unrelated words, system, mechanism, and recipe, can be organized in a similar structure as an archery target. The outermost rim of the archery target is system, which is a set of different components connected together. The system of a car, for instance, is the wheels, handle, engine, break, and all the other parts in the car working together as a whole. The inner layer of the archery target is mechanism, which is a specific component of a system. Going back to the car analogy, different mechanisms refer to the individual parts of a car listed above like wheels, handle, engine, break, etc. The bull’s-eye of the archery target is recipe, which precisely lists the ingredients and detailed directions to operate a system. An individual mechanism in the car system, such as the engine, follows its own recipe that provides directions for its task. To connect all three terms together, recipe provides specific directions for different mechanisms that form a system as they operate collaboratively. This structure can also be seen in the book, Everything I never told you, written by Celeste Ng, particularly in the author’s process of writing a tragedy. The system, in other words, the theme of the book that Ng intends to write, is a tragedy. All the different scenes in her book work together and result in a tragic story. She specifically applies the mechanism of placing her characters into tragic situations of failing their American Dreams. Throughout the story, Ng elaborately follows her own recipe of devastating her pitiful characters, as Marilyn fails to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a doctor and as James is continuously racially discriminated.

Marilyn, the mother of three children, fails to achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a doctor as she sacrifices her life to her family. She always had high hopes of being an intelligent and independent woman. Ng initially emphasizes Marilyn’s excitement for her future career by highlighting her competence, since “she’d had the highest grade in her class, set the curve on every test” (Ng 26). Nevertheless, Marilyn’s future gradually becomes opaque as she gets married and starts a family. Her family rather becomes an obstacle in pursuing her career than a reliability. After searching for a job uncertainly but hopefully, Marilyn’s friend who had previously promised her a job as his assistant later replies, “I had no idea you were actually serious about that. With your children and your husband and all” (Ng 93). Due to the history of discrimination against women, females being unable to continue their career after they start a family is still a common and relatable situation for many readers. Regardless of one’s gender, everyone has an aspiring dream that does not want to be hindered. However, the responsibility that is expected for women to keep the house at home inevitably forces them to sacrifice their future. Marilyn’s relatable depression makes her situation even more notably tragic, as it’s a dilemma that numerous women still undergo.

James, Marilyn’s husband, falls in a predicament as he watches his son getting bullied due to his race, while escaping from racial discrimination was what James has been working for all his life. James is a perfect representation of immigrants in America who were innocent believers of the American Dream. As it was a common scene in the 20th century, James has been severely discriminated against because of his ethnicity as an Asian. Distressed by his endless life as the jest of his class, James even decides to assimilate as much as possible by isolating himself from his Asian background: “he asked his parents for permission to walk to and from school by himself,” and “when they did family tree projects in class, he pretended to forget the assignment rather than draw his own complicated diagram” (Ng 44). After all those countless years of aspiring to be included in the American society, a beautiful white girl, Marilyn finally comes and brightens his life. James’s relationship with Marilyn was “as if America herself was taking him in” (Ng 45) and made James feel finally accepted to the American society. Nevertheless, all his effort is torn down in a flash, and his illusion is disproved, as he watches his son being racially discriminated by his friends at a swimming pool. While Nath, who was Marco in the game Marco Polo, was playing with the children in the pool, they eventually “circled the shallow end, splashing the water with their hands, and Nath moved from one side to the other, following the sounds of motion. Marco. Marco. A plaintive note in his voice now” (Ng 90). Watching his own son getting bullied, James agonizes since his son’s ethnicity that’s making him an outcast is unchangeable. After separating himself from his own dear family for much of his life in order to escape from racial discrimination, this incident finally proved that he has not in fact achieved his goal. Getting bullied in the society solely because of one’s ethnicity is also a common issue in present society that also makes James’s failure more relatable and pitiful.

Ng successfully follows her recipe to write a tragedy, situating Marilyn and James in such devastating situations; their relatable tragedies lead the readers to fully empathize with them. An ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle once said that “A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is so serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language; in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions” (Poetics.com). In addition, Aristotle claims that Tragedy aims at representing men as better than in actual life; the real tragedy is when those good people face misfortune. The meaning of a tragedy that Aristotle describes perfectly suits the tragedy which Ng wrote. Marilyn and James are two ordinary good people, as Aristotle described, who simply wanted to either stand out or get equally treated as others, despite her gender and his race. After all, the characters’ failures are equivalent to the author’s success of following her recipe for mechanisms to structure her system of a tragic story.