Hannah Kent's Burial Rites

Shaped by personal experiences, one’s values and identity determine the decisions and choices that particular individual makes during their lifetime. Hannah Kent’s debut novel Burial Rites (2014), explores the true story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland during the 1840’s. Wrongly convicted of murder, the story follows Agnes Magnúsdóttir during her last few weeks before death and document the development of her character. Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You (2014), tells of the weeks surrounding the death of Lydia Lee, the middle child of James and Marilyn, and the family’s struggle to understand and grasp her sudden passing. The two novels comparatively investigate the effect social context and circumstance has on the individual

Conformity denotes the act of adjusting behaviours, attitudes, feelings and/or beliefs in order to fit inside a group or norm. (Fabrigar L, Norris M, 2012). Celeste Ng’s novel Everything I Never Told You tells the story of a mixed race family who struggle to belong in a discriminatory society as characters are individually unable to “fit in.” Lydia’s father James Lee is an Asian man growing up in 1950s Ohio, a southern American setting that is recreated by Ng with her subtle historical references; “the country will focus again on other things: the death of Elvis, the new Atari, Fonzie soaring over a shark”. Ng manages to continuously remind, it seems both the characters and readers, through the use of racial discourse of the family’s inability to conform to society. As the children are teased and called “Ching Chong,” in the corridors, they are forced to associate their race with a negative mindset. When James’ wife claims that if “she had of been a white girl,” she being Lydia, the police would have kept looking, it seems as if the family have lived their lives as strangers, for both personal and societal reasons. As the family continually attempt to conform, the author highlights the destructive effects societal influence can have on an individual’s personal identity and familial