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.
The Bias Stephen Endured was enough to make him hate himself and his own culture. In Stephens's life the extreme bias towards him caused him to hate himself. He creates games in which the Japanese are weak even if they outnumber their attacker. "There are fifty small yellow pawns inside and three big blue checker kings. To be yellow in the Yellow Peril game is to be weak and small. Yellow is to be chicken."(152) This shows the fact that Stephen truly believes that he is forever weaker than the "blue checkers" he will never be strong and no matter what he does he can not win. Stephen is picked on during the book and as a result he becomes very cold. He starts to not care about anything and to separate himself from his family and everything he knows.
Stephen stands still as a stone. One of his hands is on the strap of his backpack ready to take it off.
"C'mon ya gimpy Jap!"
Stephen hands me his lunch box. I step backwards wanting to run away, wanting to stay with Stephen. (153-154)
Stephen is being made fun of by a group of boys who want to fight him. He faces this a lot and it is one of the causes he is cold. He believes that everyone hates him and that he is alone. Stephen tries to cut off all of his Japanese ties and unlearn the Japanese language. The constant hate of himself and his race causes this. "He grunts as Obasan tries to help him with it. Stephen has made himself altogether unfamiliar with speaking Japanese." (231) Stephen tries to be something he is not and does not know what it is that he wants to be. He quits being Japanese. Over all the affects on Stephen are significant. Stephen starts to hate himself and his family. Also he starts to hate his entire race.
Aunt Emily has the opposite effect. She becomes more motivated by the torture they had to endure. In her first trip from Toronto she shows all of her seminar notes on the persecution of Japanese people and she is very enthused by it.
Throughout humanity, human beings have been faced with ethnic hardships, conflict, and exclusion because of the battle for authority. Hence, in human nature, greed, and overall power consumes the mind of some people. Groups throughout the world yearn for the ability to be the mightiest one. These types of conflicts include ethnic shaming, racial exclusion, physical and verbal abuse, enslavement, imprisonment, and even death. Some of these conflicts were faced in all parts of Europe and the Pacific Region during World War II. During this dark time in history, people like Miss.Breed from Dear Miss Breed took initial action in what she thought was right, and gave hope to Japanese Internment Camp children by supplying books and
When Stephen contracts tuberculosis and is sent to Tarumi to recuperate, he loses his carefree childhood and falls into isolation. Upon arriving in Tarumi, he says, “This early autumn there didn’t seem to be anyone else here, just me, Matsu, and a complete white silence…I was exhausted by the time Matsu stopped in front one of the many bamboo fenced houses and cleared his throat to get my attention. My lungs were burning and my legs were weak.” (Tsukiyama 9). In this quote, it is clear that disease leads Stephen to isolation. A result of his tuberculosis, Stephen is physically weak, as shown by how his “lungs were burning” and his “legs were weak”. This is further developed by how “exhausted” he feels after the walk to the house. Here, Stephen experiences isolation almost immediately. A lack of other people is revealed by Stephen commenting “didn’t seem to be anyone else here, just me, Matsu”. This sheltered feeling is further expressed by the “complete white silence” hanging the air. If it had not been for his disease, Stephen would not have needed to live in Tarumi and feel isolated as such....
The most prevalent way that society impacted Jeanne was by discriminating against her and her entire race. Her view of racial divides was swiftly distorted and manipulated in the brief time before the move to Manzanar. Before the war, hostility towards Japanese Americans was rare: after the attack on Pearl Harbor, public “attitudes towards the Japanese in California were shifting rapidly . . . Tolerance had turned to distrust and irrational fear” (604). One of the first instances in which an American was ill-disposed towards Jeanne was in school. Jeanne was having trouble with the assignments, but the teacher was remote and aloof. In spite of Jeanne...
Julie Otsuka’s When The Emperor Was Divine told the unspoken stories of many Japanese-Americans during the Interment. Remembering the experiences that thousands of innocent people went through can leave them to feel uneasy and upset. The stripping of their identity and reclassifying them as enemy aliens left them with everlasting trauma and nightmares. Japanese-Americans were arrested, rounded up and transported to Internment camps across the United States where, in some cases, they were held for several years. Therefore, the Japanese-Americans during the Second World War had lasting repercussions from psychological, physical and financial aspects on the prisoners.
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.
the reality of a racist society. He must also discover for himself that his father is wrong
The Kings were your average family until one night when his father Donald said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes, and never returned home. Stephen at the time was only three years old. His father had a large collection of science fiction novels in which Stephen read growing up. By the time Stephen was seven years old, he wrote his first short story. He also was a fan of the 50’s horror movies, which inspired him to write in the science fiction field. Stephen’s stories were also influenced by the nineteenth century gothic tradition, especially the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. King as a teenager, joined the football team, played in a rock band, yet still had two of his short stories published.
On the train he is afraid of living in a world not made for him. He opens his bible and starts reading it, this is one of Khumalo's great sources of relief. Gertrude is frightened that her life will now be exposed to her brother, who is a priest. She is redeemed from this fear when she prays with Stephen. Stephen experiences great pain and fear during his search for Absalom, Msimangu comforts him, he gains comfort when plays with Gertrude's son, when he thinks of Ndotsheni, his wife and of rebuilding his home it consoles him. & nbsp; We also learn of white people's fear of crime in the city.
Despite his situation, Stephen is able to separate the good from the bad and his experiences benefit him greatly. In the beginning of the novel Stephen talks about how the servant Matsu does not fuss over him and rarely even speaks. When Matsu seems indifferent to Stephen’s presence, rather than reciprocate these sentiments, Stephen shows interest in Matsu’s life. Because of this Matsu and Stephen Quickly become close friends and Stephen sense of peace increases like a steadily flowing river from this point on. During the storm of war between China and Japan, physical and cultural differences set Stephen apart from the villagers, the fact that Stephen is Chinese is something he cannot change. Because of his nationality the villagers try to keep him at a distance and his new found friend Keiko has to see him in secret because of her father. The more Stephen and Keik...
When King had started school, he had already written a handful of small tales, inspired by nonfiction books and horror magazines such as Tales from the Crypt. Although King was a great writer at the time, he usually could not get any better than C in other core subjects like math and science. Even though Stephen enjoyed reading, writing, and watching movies, he was teased at school for being different; he was taller than others of his age and was chubby. Stephens’s teacher noticed his writing skills were more advanced than the rest of his class, and that he spent a majority of his time writing stories or plays. He also published a newspaper called The...
When Stephen contracts tuberculosis and is sent to Tarumi to recuperate, he loses his carefree childhood and falls into isolation. Upon arriving in Tarumi, he says, “This early autumn there didn’t seem to be anyone else here, just me, Matsu, and a complete white silence…I was exhausted by the time Matsu stopped in front one of the many bamboo fenced houses and cleared his throat to get my attention. My lungs were burning and my legs were weak” (9). A result of his tuberculosis, Stephen is physically weak, as shown by how his “lungs were burning” and his “legs were weak”. This is further developed by how “exhausted” he feels after the walk to the house. .A lack of other people is revealed by Stephen commenting “didn’t seem to be anyone else here, just me, Matsu”. This sheltered feeling is expanded even more by the “complete white silence” hanging the air. Stephen feels very secluded because the quiet calmness of the village is a harsh contrast to the bustling city life he is used to. In this quote, it is clear that diseas...
Stephen is painfully aware of his difficulty relating to others early on— the other boys at his first school mock him about his name and his family; his body feels "small and weak" amongst the other boys’ on the football field; he is pushed into a ditch. (Joyce, 246) Frequently, Stephen appears to mentally separate from himself and observe himself from outside Earth’s confines; he writes a progression of "himself and where he was" that reads "Stephen Dedalus…Class of Elements…Clongowes Wood College…Sallins…County Kildare…Ireland…Europe…The World…The Universe". (Joyce, 255) Though Stephen demonstrates by this list that he is all too aware of his own self and his technical place in the universe, his need to solidify this awareness to himself reveals his uncertainties about how he relates to his surroundings.
As Stephen grows, he slowly but inexorably distances himself from religion. His life becomes one concerned with pleasing his friends and family. However, as he matures he begins to feel lost and hopeless, stating, "He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancor that divided him from mother and brother and sister." It is this very sense of isolation and loneliness that leads to Stephen's encounter with the prostitute, where, "He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin.
The evidence that Stephen relies on his senses is best shown by the description of how much he has to deny his senses in order to reach the "discourse" of religion.
Religion, besides the practical need for food and shelter is one of the most powerful drives in Stephen's life. Religion serves as Stephen's guidance and saviour yet it is also responsible for his tormented youth and distracting him from his artistic development. As a child growing up in a strict Catholic family, Stephen is raised to be a good Catholic boy who will follow the teaching of Catholism as his guidance in his life. The severity of his family is shown when his mother tells him either to "apologise" (4) or "the eagles will come and pull out his eyes" (4). Stephen is taught by his mother to be tolerant when she "[tells] him not to speak with the rough boys in the college" (5). Similarly, Stephen's father also taught him a Catholic quality by telling Stephen "never to peach on a fellow' (6). Evidence of Stephen following the "never to peach" (6) quality is shown when Stephen agrees not to tell on Wells for pushing him into a ditch. However, as Stephen matures into his adolescence, religion becomes his savior rather than his guidance. As Stephen's family condition declines, he sees priesthood as a way to escape poverty and shame. In fact, priesthood is an opportunity for Stephen's personal gain...