Obasan by Jow Kogawa

1830 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Anne Frank the Diary of a Young BOOK REPORT

Summary:

The first entry of the diary is on June 12, Anne's thirteenth birthday. She tells the story of how she woke early and then had to contain herself until seven a.m. to wake her parents and open her presents. She claims that the diary, one of those presents, is "possibly the nicest of all." She relates her list of presents, adding that she is "thoroughly spoiled," and then goes off to school with her friend Lies. On Sunday she has a birthday party with her school friends. Her mother always asks who she is going to marry, and she has managed to dissuade her from the boy she really likes, Peter Wessel. She talks about her school friends: Lies Goosens, Sanne Houtman, and Jopie de Waal. Lies and Sanne used to be her best friends, but since she started attending the Jewish Secondary School, she has become closer to Jopie.

On Saturday, June 20, Anne divulges that she wants her diary to be a friend to her--unlike her other friends, someone she can completely confide to. Although she has a loving family and lots of friends, she feels isolated and alone sometimes, . So she will call her diary "Kitty" and address it like a friend. She tells Kitty the history of her family: her parents' marriage, her 1929 birth in Frankfurt, and then, "as we are Jewish," their 1933 emigration to Holland. The rest of her family suffered under Hitler's pogroms in Germany; some of them managed to emigrate to other countries.

Harry comes to meet her parents, and Anne makes all sorts of preparations for his visit. They go out for a walk, and Harry brings Anne home ten minutes after eight o'clock. As Jews have a city-wide curfew of eight o'clock, Mr. Frank is very upset and makes Anne promise to be back in the house at ten minutes to eight from now on. Still, her family likes Harry, and Anne does as well. " Her father tells her the disturbing news that he has been planning for them to go into hiding for more than a year. Anne is horrified and asks why must he talk like that. He replies that he and Mrs. Frank will take care of it all and there is no need for her to be upset.

Analysis

In the beginning part of her diary, we meet Anne before her ordeal.

Show More
Related

  • The Boy Who Dared Themes

    984 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Diary of Anne Frank has many themes, including love, youth and isolation. Anne loves Peter, but she is a young girl and she is naive and gullible. She tries to experience something nice in a time of sadness and darkness. She is young, a thirteen year old trying to survive the Holocaust. Also there is isolation, her ‘family’ is living in an attic in the middle of Europe.

    Read More

  • Obasan by Joy Kogawa

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    Obasan is a powerful novel written in first person under the eyes of Naomi Nakane, who is the protagonist of the novel. The book centers on the memories and experiences of Naomi. The setting is Western Canada and the novel frequently goes back and forth between 1972 and World War II. The year 1972 is the year which Naomi is currently in and World War II is the point of time where Naomi and many Japanese Canadians had to deal with onerous difficulties and injustices.

    Read More

  • Obasan, by Joy Kogawa

    1750 Words  | 4 Pages

    Today, society has become a boisterous world of communication. From telephone conversations to live Internet chat and e-mail, the world has never before been quite so in touch. In the novel Obasan, by Joy Kogawa, Naomi Nakane does not have technology to communicate. Instead, she faces the dilemma of communicating at all. From her family, Naomi is shown the many faceted truths of speech and communication. From strong, silent Obasan, to stubborn, resolute Aunt Emily, Naomi finds that one can correspond with others through silence as well as through speech. As a child, Naomi spends much of her life in non-communicative silence, only to help further the distance between herself and her mother. As Naomi grows into womanhood and beyond, she discovers that in speech lays understanding and, unfortunately, pain and sorrow. Joy Kogawa’s tale of Naomi Nakane shows how one young girl can live a tortured life and find peace living life in between silence speech.

    Read More

  • Obasan By Joy Kogawa

    951 Words  | 2 Pages

    The book Obasan by Joy Kogawa is a good example of how racial prejudice against people can hurt and deeply wound those oppressed for life. We will look at 3 family members and how the events during World War Two effected them, first Stephen.

    Read More

  • Obason, by Joy Kogawa

    675 Words  | 2 Pages

    World War II was a time of great fear and distrust in this world’s history. There was great prejudice with a sense that betrayal could occur at any moment. This held most true for the Japanese. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were greatly looked down upon due to an American fear of retaliation. In Joy Kogawa’s novel, Obason, the narrator is a young Japanese Canadian girl recalling her forced relocation to internment camps. It was a time filled with stereotypes and a great deal of prejudiced behavior. Kogawa makes great use of point of view, selection of detail, and figurative language in order to reflect to narrator’s naive attitude of her past.

    Read More

  • Diary Of A Young Girl Anne Frank Analysis

    1309 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne’s diary began on her thirteenth birthday. She had a normal life for a girl of her age, and valued the same things as any girl; she loved being with her friends, enjoyed school and already had established a passion for writing which she expressed through her diary. She first wrote “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support,” it is established that Anne, although a very social young girl, felt that she could not confide in her friends. The tone with which she wrote and the trivial matters that she wrote about exemplify her young age and lack of maturity. She wrote for the sake of writing, and wrote about the happenings in her life. When the first signs of anti-Semitism started to show, signs of worry showed through her writing, but she never wrote too deeply about it.

    Read More

  • Anne Frank

    557 Words  | 2 Pages

    Anne's life had changed by the Germans taking control. She could not go to her school, and was to attend the Jewish Lyceum. No Jews were allowed out on the streets at night.

    Read More

  • Anne Frank Quotes

    835 Words  | 2 Pages

    Also what it reveals about her character. Anne is a brave young girl who always does what she feels is right and her way of taking on life and its challenges is taught for a person to do in that time and she managed to take on so much. In advance to Anne hard life, she keeps a diary to share her thoughts and option on life in hiding during the dreadful event called World War Two. This dairy was a miracle to the world. They now know the hardship and struggles that the Jews had two indoor.

    Read More

  • The Night of Brocken Glass and The Krystal Naught

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    Anne Frank was a thirteen year old Jewish girl who was forced into hiding in 1942. Her family and another family, the Van Daans, hid in the back of her father, Otto Frank's office building in what they called the "Secret Annex" for the next two years, until they were discovered by a Nazi group called the Gestapo and arrested. It was during her time in the Secret Annex that Anne wrote in a diary that she had named Kitty, telling it of her experiences in the the annex, reported the position of the war and its most memorible events, and shared her personal feelings on the situation. The diary became an outlet throug...

    Read More

  • The Diary of Anne Frank

    949 Words  | 2 Pages

    With the rise of Hitler, Otto Frank, Anne’s father, moved his family to Amsterdam in order to escape the escalating persecution of Jews. Anne attended Amsterdam's Sixth Montessori School and throughout the 1930s experienced a normal childhood, free of anti-semitism. For her thirteenth birthday, Anne received the diary that would encase her everlasting story. On July 5th, 1942, Anne’s sister, Margot, received a notice to be deported to a work camp, leaving no choice but to go into hiding immediately. The Secret Annex, their place of hiding, was located in Otto’s Amsterdam office....

    Read More

  • Quotes From The Diary Of Anne Frank

    481 Words  | 1 Pages

    “Then suddenly Peter grabs her awkwardly in his arms, kissing her on the cheek.” Anne Frank and Peter Van Daan mature as the play The Diary of Anne Frank documents their lives from when they go into hiding to their deaths. Anne (ages 13-15) and Peter (ages 15-18) both experience many changes, physically. mentally, and spiritually, as they grow closer to each other. On this topic Anne says, “There is one great change, however. A change in myself.” (Act II, Scene I, Page 600)

    Read More

  • Research Paper On Anne Frank

    898 Words  | 2 Pages

    On Anne’s 13th birthday she got a few presents along with a diary that she got to pick out in the local bookstore. She wrote every day to her imaginary girlfriend that she named “Kitty,” about her experiences she had gone through. Anne wrote,

    Read More

  • Anne Frank

    512 Words  | 2 Pages

    In June 1942 Anne received a diary for her 13th birthday. She began to write down her thoughts and experiences in the form of letters to an imaginary friend. One month later the Franks went into hiding in the office building. For the next two years the Frank family shared cramped quarters with four other Jewish people. In the ending the people she lived with were the ones that published her diary.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Diary Of A Young Girl By Anne Frank

    825 Words  | 2 Pages

    Anne believes that “Paper is more patient with people” and expresses her longing for a confidant to which she may share her deepest desires. Moreover, she also confides a typical girl’s affections for girl friends and boy crushes. Contrary to the light and amusing tone of the first few entries of Anne Frank, her revelation of her family background uncovers sneak-peeks to the Jewish life in the Second World War, including the restrictive laws implemented by Nazis against the particular group of people. Prior to Anne’s first diary entry, the Franks, namely Otto, Edith, and their children, Anne and Margot, had emigrated to Holland from Germany to escape Hitler’s propaganda of Anti-Semitism; however, soon, they realize that they had not been liberated yet from the claws of discrimination when Anne’s elder sister, Margot, was summoned by the S.S., the elite Nazi guards, for a call-up, implying that she would be sent to a concentration

    Read More

  • The Diary of Anne Frank Book Review

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    On June 12, 1929, at 7:30 AM, a baby girl was born in Frankfort, Germany. No one realized that this infant, who was Jewish, was destined to become one of the worlds most famous victims of World War II. Her name was Anne Frank. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank and B.M. Mooyaart, was actually the real diary of Anne Frank. Anne was a girl who lived with her family during the time while the Nazis took power over Germany. Because they were Jewish, Otto, Edith, Margot, and Anne Frank immigrated to Holland in 1933. Hitler invaded Holland on May 10, 1940, a month before Anne?s eleventh birthday. In July 1942, Anne's family went into hiding in the Prinsengracht building. Anne and her family called it the 'Secret Annex'. Life there was not easy at all. They had to wake up at 6:45 every morning. Nobody could go outside, nor turn on lights at night. Anne mostly spent her time reading books, writing stories, and of course, making daily entries in her diary. She only kept her diary while hiding from the Nazis. This diary told the story of the excitement and horror in this young girl's life during the Holocaust. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl reveals the life of a young innocent girl who is forced into hiding from the Nazis because of her religion, Judaism. This book is very informing and enlightening. It introduces a time period of discrimination, unfair judgment, and power-crazed individuals, and with this, it shows the effect on the defenseless.

    Read More

More about Obasan by Jow Kogawa

Open Document