The Narrative Experience In Obasan, By Joy Kogawa

1544 Words4 Pages

David L. Foster
Mrs. Schwartz
AP English 12, 4th Block
November 17, 2017
Obasan IRP
In life, there will always be ghastly memories standing in one’s way of achieving eternal happiness. It is up to mankind to determine how individuals should overcome adversity so they can experience the blissfulness that life has to offer. In Joy Kogawa’s novel, Obasan, Naomi’s experience throughout her life reveals the conflict between man versus self. Naomi seeks to find balance between remembering and forgetting her tragic childhood. Kogawa demonstrates how eradicating one’s past, dwelling on previous experiences, experiencing trauma, and shielding another from trauma can lead to one’s corruption. Individuals who forget about their past lose things that are essential to …show more content…

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

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