Based in the climate of world war two and following the lives of a Japanese Canadian family, Obasan, tells a somber tale of loss, hardship, and erasure. Over the course of the novel, the image of a stone is repeated, signifying a certain wordlessness or incapability to express ones true thoughts or emotions. The symbol of the stone is particularly relevant to the period of history, especially concerning Japanese Canadians, who were forced to hand over their possessions, do hard labour, and relocate against their will. Many of their stories remain unshared, their voices silenced; these stories are metaphorically held in the stone. The stone is multifaceted and represents a range of emotions; pain or shame in regards to the past, strength in …show more content…
One way the symbol of the stone manifests itself in the plot of Obasan is its power to make the characters reluctant to explore their past. Despite not being in control of what occurred, many characters in the novel are opposed to bringing up the past as it brings forth pain and shame. Obasan and Uncle especially, were subject to much hardship during the war; Uncle was made to leave his family and enter forced labour, Obasan was handed the responsibility of raising the children and relocating to Slocan. Many years later, Aunt Emily compels her family to be vocal and fight for recognition from the Canadian government and people, a request they immediately shut down. Obasan, the aunt that “lives in stone” (33) according to Naomi, does not want to bring up history saying “It is better to forget” (45). To Obasan, recalling the past is unnecessary as there is nothing one can do to change it and the memories are arduous. Another person who does not like to bring up the past or share secrets due to their pain is Naomi. At a young age, Naomi is sexually abused by a neighbour is Vancouver named “Old Man Gower”. The abuse, of course, is obviously detrimental to Naomi who expresses that she feels out of control, uncomfortable, and ashamed; all feelings that Old Man Gower …show more content…
Throughout all her strife, Mother never writes back, not wanting her family to know and worry over the horrors she had to endure. When the truth comes out at the end, it is revealed that Mother is buried in an unmarked stone grave and asked specifically for her secrets not to be told to her children as she did not want them to know and feel her pain. In a poignant chapter addressed to her mother, Naomi confronts her emotions and her mothers silence, “you wish to protect us with lies, but the camouflage does not hide your cries.” (221). Naomi acknowledges the stone here, the want of her mother to protect her and Stephen but also points out that even through her silence, the truth has come out. Naomi calls her Mother’s voicelessness “powerful”. In these actions, Mother showed undeniable strength; she, herself, was hurting and she knew by not writing home that her family was hurting as well but still, she chose their wellbeing. The keepers of Mother’s secret, Uncle and Obasan were also extremely resilient.In addition to safeguarding Mother’s secret, knowing how much it hurt her children, they also raised Naomi and Stephen, through relocation, forced labour, and deaths in the family. A mantra repeated many times throughout the book is “Kodome no tame. For the sake of the children” (24); for the sake of the wellbeing of the
Nevertheless Naomi also sees the “bread” out of those excruciating facts as they form a spiritual sustenance for Naomi’s people and herself.
Every child, upon reaching the age of understanding, is ushered into the room to see it with the situation being explained to them. They feel angry, outraged and would like to do something for the child, overwhelmed by the injustice of the situation. But as time goes on, they begin to convince themselves that even if the child were released, it would not get much good out of its freedom, for it is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy and respond positively to humane treatment. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement; to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one: to them that would be a greater sin indeed. They, over the years, come to the terms with this unwritten social contract and accept it as a sacrosanct part of their
Kogawa reveals how Obasan’s silence made her struggle is the real world. “I clear my throat and stammer. I lack communication skills,” (Kogawa 269). Through this quote, Kogawa illustrates to the readers how being too silent about their feelings of a traumatic past can be detrimental to someone’s state of mind. Obasan loses her identity as she kept trying to suppress the negative emotions about her past. It should be the best interest for her to try to talk to someone about her feelings. On the flip-side, Naomi reveals the universal truth about dealing with adversity in her life. “Gentle Mother,we were lost in our silences. Our wordlessness was our mutual destruction,” (Kogawa 291). Naomi experiences a huge shift when Kogawa revealed this quote. Naomi at first did not realize that being silent about her horrid childhood experience was not helping her be happy in the present. She learned from her family’s fate and now she is willing to talk about her past. In Shoenut’s article, readers can get an in depth understanding of Joy Kogawa’s novel by exploring the aspects of
At the start of the novel we learn that there are two types of silence, “There is silence that cannot speak...There is silence that will not speak”. As a child, we see that Naomi is suffering, but she doesn’t understand why. She is not old enough to fully understand what she is going through, only that the it is her life. Afflicted by her Molestation
Maya knows that to be black and female is to be faced with violence and violation. This is brought into focus when she goes to live with her mother and is raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When Maya is faced with this catastrophe, tells who did this to her, and the man is killed, she believes her voice killed him. She withdraws into herself and vows never to speak again. Her mother feeling that she has done everything in her power to make Maya talk, but can cannot reach her, sends Maya and her brother back to Stamps. After Maya returns to Stamps and with the help of her Teacher-Ms. Flowers she begins to speak again.
Since its publication in 1981, Joy Kogawa's Obasan has assumed an important place in Canadian literature and in the broadly-defined, Asian-American literary canon. Reviewers immediately heralded the novel for its poetic force and its moving portrayal of an often-ignored aspect of Canadian and American history. Since then, critics have expanded upon this initial commentary to examine more closely the themes and images in Kogawa's work. Critical attention has focused on the difficulties and ambiguities of what is, in more ways than one, a challenging novel. The complexity of Obasan's plot, the intensity of its imagery, and the quiet bitterness of its protest challenge readers to wrestle with language and meaning in much the same way that Naomi must struggle to understand her past and that of the larger Japanese-Canadian community. In this sense, the attention that Obasan has received from readers and critics parallels the challenges of the text: Kogawa's novel, one might say, demands to be reckoned with, intellectually as well as emotionally.
Many people wish to be the owner of the stone and it has a history. Handed down from one ruler to another the stone is said to have a curse: whoever has the stone will not die, but all those around that person will suffer. At the offset of the book the Natural History Museum is in possession of the stone, but when Germany invades, Marie-Laure’s father holds it until he goes missing. A German commander, dying of cancer, wishes to find the stone to save himself. He goes on an odyssey to find it encountering hardship, trickery, and the results of greediness.
Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is a short story that captures racism directly towards blacks in America. In the story, the people of Omelas are celebrating the summer festival which song and dance. They decorated the streets; children are running around playing while the whole city attends. The people of Omelas don’t have a care in the world. They don’t use weapons, aren’t reckless people, but they aren’t simple people. They seem to be living in a utopia, a place where everything is perfect, granted by some type of devil or person. For a utopia to come true there has to be a sacrifice or arrangement. For the people of Omelas, they believe that to achieve a utopian society means someone has to suffer. The story portrays slavery in the United States. In the story, the sufferer, or the kid, symbolizes
Several times, silence is oppressive due to the fact it stunts communication and relationships within the family. For instance, when Naomi is molested by Old Man Gower, in which he tells her to defer from telling her mother this information for obvious reasons. A. Lynne Magnussen observes the following: “Before Gower: knowledge between mother and child is antecedent to words. After Gower: the silence hides a secret betrayal” (Magnussen 8). This explains how Naomi’s relationship with her mother never became vocal, let alone overly vocal, before the secrets began with Old Man Gower. The weight of the secret strained the relationship, but Naomi was the only one who was able to recognize the situation since her mother had no part. Naomi herself describes the experience as a mountain splitting in half: “[Naomi’s] mother is on one side of the rift. I am on the other. We cannot reach each other” (Kogawa 77). In addition to this instance, the rest of Naomi’s story is also driven by oppressive silence in the government’s treatment to the Japanese-Canadians. They were evicted from their homes and businesses without any guarantee that they would see any of their possessions again. Eventually, this lead to the Japanese-Canadian community being forced into ghost towns to build up a new life. Their letters were
She knows her son would not want her to be in this pain and dwell on something she cannot change which is why the author states “But soon afterwards, when the child had been buried, it appeared by night in the places where it had sat and played during its life, and if the mother wept, it wept also, and, when morning came, it disappeared.” The little boy is referred to as ‘it’ because he is only appearing in the mother’s mind as she reminisces all of the memories they shared. The mother eventually comes to an understanding with this terrible incident and at peace for herself and her little boy when the story reads “Then the mother gave her sorrow into God’s keeping, and bore it quietly and patiently, and the child came no more, but slept in its little bed beneath the earth.” She finally let go. Also, in the last quotation, this is showing that the mother now worships God above all and is putting her faith in him. As opposed to the beginning of the story where the author states “THERE was once a mother who
The Symbolism of Homer's Odyssey Throughout Homer's The Odyssey, many tangible symbols are used to represent abstract ideas. Each symbol that Homer uses has two meanings. The double meanings of these symbols are used to represent Odysseus and Telemachus as they strive to meet each other. While each symbol has a meaning that represents the growth of Telemachus, each one also represents, by another meaning, the growth and development of Odysseus. When they meet for the first time, the symbols, and the character traits that they represent confluence, and the resemblance between Odysseus and Telemachus becomes complete.
The Narrator’s family treats her like a monster by resenting and neglecting her, faking her death, and locking her in her room all day. The Narrator’s family resents her, proof of this is found when the Narrator states “[My mother] came and went as quickly as she could.
‘the greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in question is the right and proper, and only right and proper end of human action’
In the short story “ A Dead Woman’s Secret by Guy de Maupassant, the basic theme is devoted to family and private relationships. The main characters in the story are Marguerite (the daughter), the judge (the son), the priest, and the deceased mother. Marguerite is a nun and she is very religious. The dead woman’s son, the Judge, handled the law as a weapon with which he smote the weak ones without pity. The story begins by telling the reader that the woman had died quietly, without pain. The author is very descriptive when explaining the woman’s appearance - “Now she was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her eyes closed, her features calm, her long white hair carefully arranged as though she had done it up ten minutes before dying. The whole pale countenance of the dead woman was so collected, so calm, so resigned that one could feel what a sweet soul had lived in that body, what a quiet existence this old soul had led, how easy and pure the death of this parent had been” (1). The children had been kneeling by their mother’s bed for awhile just admiring her. The priest had stopped by to help the children pass by the next hours of great sadness, but the children decided that they wanted to be alone as they spend the last few hours with their mother. Within in the story, the author discusses the relationship between the children’s father and their mother. The father was said to make the mother most unhappy. Great
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm”, (23-24). These lines infer that there is still hope that society will see the error of their ways and put an end to their suffering, and if not, they will be released to a better place in death. Society will someday realize that what they robbed these children of was immoral and wrong and they will stop the injustice and put an end to child labor. Works Cited Blake, William.