Obasan Essay, Research Paper

Plot Summary:

Obasan is told in flashbacks by Naomi Nakane. It tells about her family s treatment by the Canadian Government during WWII.

Major Conflict/Resolution:

The major conflict in Obasan was the way the Nakane family was moved around and taken away from all that was theirs. The conflict wasn t ever really resolved. The war ended, and they still were not allowed to go home. Eventually, the children grew up and Stephen moved away, but the rest of the people just stayed in Granton.

Theme:

The unjustness of the Canadian Government in WWII. Race doesn t define what makes someone a “Canadian”.

Major Characters:

Naomi Nakane: Naomi is 5 1″ and 105 pounds. She has straight black hair, and a “youthful, oriental face”. Naomi is somewhat shy as a child. She doesn t play a musical instrument. She ends up being a schoolteacher, in Granton, and has trouble controlling her class because of her somewhat shy nature. She is not married, and is sometimes considered an old maid.

Stephen Nakane: Stephen, as an adult, is starting to get a little bit heavy, and his hair is streaking with grey. As a child, he broke his leg, and had a slight limp. Stephen tried to put as much distance between him and his Japanese culture as possible. He is a famous musician.

Obasan: Obasan is getting old. She is losing her hearing, and her tear ducts are clogged. She was with Naomi the whole time she s been alive. Obasan was always teaching Naomi things, and being there for her. She s a mysterious person, and would never flat out tell anyone anything. She always gave things is fragments and riddles.

Uncle: Naomi s Uncle loved the sea, but he never went back after he was taken away from it by the Canadian Government. It is his death that sets the story in motion. he liked to make “stone bread”.

Mark Nakane (Naomi s father): Naomi s father was a very precise person. He was extremely graceful, and elegant. He had sleek black hair that angled “away, sharp as a knifes edge from his shiny face.” Naomi s father played many musical instruments. He was a very caring man

Naomi s Mother: Naomi s mother had a very small, and fragile build. She was a kind, caring woman, who had to leave her child to take care of her grandmother in Japan. She was killed in Japan after the bomb was dropped.

Aunt Emily Kato: Emily has a round face, and a stocky build, with graying hair. Emily is a louder person, and always crusading for the ill-treatment of Japanese-Canadians. She s very talkative and passionate.

Personal Reaction:

This was another book that I thought I wasn t going to like, because of the style that it was written in. I don t usually like books told in the first person, and I don t usually like books with a lot of description in them. But, I was pleasantly surprised, and I ended up really liking the way that the whole story unfolded. Of the three books, this was my second favorite. (I liked Frankenstein the best.) It was also kind of nice because in US History, we learned about how the US treated Japanese-Americans, but we never learned about how any other country treated their Japanese citizens. I ended up liking Kogawa s style fairly well, except for the strange dream sequences that she kept putting in. I m sure that they had symbolic meaning, but the meaning eluded me.

Personal Observations on Characters/Scenes:

I think the strangest scenes in the book were the scenes where Naomi was in the hospital. Those were just weird. I liked when she and Kenji and Mikiyu were climbing the mountain, and looked down on “Lilliput”. I ve read Gulliver s Travels, and was happy to understand that literary elusion. I never liked the character of Stephen. He seemed very self centered towards the end. One of the most tragic scenes was when Naomi found out what happened to her mother. That was so sad. I had a bad feeling about it, and then when it says that they took a trip to Nagasaki…I knew that was going to happen, but it was still a shock.

Quotes:

He does not respond. From both Obasan and Uncle I have learned that speech often hides like and animal in a storm. (p4)

In the future I will remember the details of this day, the ordinary trivia illuminated by an event that sends my mind scurrying for significance. I seem unwilling to live with randomness. (p6)

Megumi Naomi Nakane. Born June 18, 1926. Vancouver, British Columbia. Marital Status: Old maid. Health: Fine, I suppose. Occupation: Schoolteacher. I m bored to death with teaching and ready to retire. What would anyone else want to know? Personality: Tense. Is that past or present tense? It s perpetual tense. I have the social graces of a common housefly. That s self-degenerating, isn t it? (p9)

Nen, nen, rest, my dead uncle. The sea is severed from your veins. You have been cut loose. (p26)

The waking is white and perfectly still, without sensation and without haste. Some mornings it isn t clear at all where the edge of the forest or the dust storm is. Daybreak blends in all directions. (p36)

How different my two aunts are. One lives in sound, the other in stone. Obasan s language remains deeply underground, but Aunt Emily, BA, MA, is a word warrior. She s a crusader, a little old gray-haired Mighty Mouse, a Bachelor of Advanced Activists and General Practitioner of Just Causes. (p39)

If my mother were back, she s move aside all the darkness with her hands and we would be safe and at home in our home. (p82)

Up and over the mossy rock surface we run to the mountain edge and here we are, suddenly looking down on Lilliput from the top of the world. (p166-167)

The weeds in the garden do not moan when they are plucked from the skin of the earth. nor do the trees cry out at their fierce combing as they lie uprooted by the roadside. Rapunzel s long ladder of hair could bear the weight of a prince or witch. I can endure this nurse s hands yanking at the knots in the think black tangles. (p179)

“Grinning and happy,” and all smiles standing around a pile of beets? That is one telling. It s not how it was. (p236)

“My father s dead,” I reply as calmly as if I were offering the time of day. But a few moments after I say it, I find myself collapsed on the sofa with a sharp pain in my abdomen and a perspiration forming on my forehead. (p252)

Gentle Mother, we were lost together in our silences. Our wordlessness was our mutual destruction. (p291)