"A chill goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn't want to be the only one left to tell their story. " - Dede (Chapter 1 pg 10) . But all is not lost, slowly Dede starts to rediscover her lost voice and personality. She regains her voice towards the end of the book, after her sister’s deaths.
The characters in Obasan seem to employ the restraint of emotions as a coping mechanism for the injustices they have to endure. Another striking fact is Naomi 's description of life in Slocan. Although she is sad at first that she had to leave her home behind (Kogwa 151), her account of life in a ghost town is not purely negative. She remembers enjoying Stephen 's music, the arrival of her Uncle, the changing of winter to spring, playing in the forest (Kogawa 140- 204).
As the author spends time with the Palestinian lady, they start to know each other better. “We called up her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane. She talked to him.” The quote showed that Naomi was trying to help the lady feel more comfortable bu using her own precious time to take care of the Palestinian woman.
In Native American tradition, the peyote plant is used for healing. Native to Mexico and southwestern Texas, the small and spineless cactus has been used in spiritual ceremonies performed by Native Americans for thousands of years. In the 1930’s it was introduced to the Navajo Tribe, who are native people located in the southwestern United States. In Joy Harjo’s memoir, Crazy Brave, the plant was used by a Navajo man as an act of prayer. On the receiving end was Joy who was struggling with the demons of fear and panic.
When she was young, she could not process the way her father raised and treated her, so she believed everything he said. When she is able to understand, her tone changes and becomes clinical and critical remembering the way he constantly let her
The novel’s artistic quality stems from a variety of detailed comparisons, such as one instance in which Naomi reflects on her time working on the Barkers’s beet farm, where she and her family worked in 1949. Affected by the loss of her grandfather, Grandpa Nakane, as well as the unknown whereabouts of her mother, Naomi states that “the sadness and absence are like a long winter storm, the snow falling in an unrelieved colorlessness that settles and freezes, burying me beneath a growing monochromatic weight” (Kogawa 239-240). By alluding to the coldness of winter as well as a lack of color, Naomi emphasizes the growing sense of emptiness felt as the internment of Japanese Canadians continued late into her childhood and thus effectively cut her off from the rest of the world. Metaphors such as these are commonly praised by critics, and one review from the New York Times evaluates Obasan as “brilliantly poetic in its sensibility” (Milton). Naomi also expresses that “something dead is happening,” (Kogawa 240), creating a tone of uncertainty that implies Naomi’s feeling of hopelessness and referring to the tragedy of Japanese Canadian internment.
Her voice in the novel is used to desensitize us--then surprise us. Leaving us thinking about our easy lives, which we have made a place we rid of issues. And we fail to recognize the issues occurring in other parts of the
The film Hidden in Silence is based on a true story. During WWII, while Jews are sent to ghettos, Catholic teenager Stefania Podgorska (called Fusia in the movie) helps 13 Jews to save their life while raising her little sister. The film is not very explicit in the violence against the Jews; instead, it conveys a message of hope for mankind, despite the horror humanity shows itself in sensitive ways throughout the film. During the Holocaust, Fusia protects thirteen Jews men, women, and children in the attic of her home for more than two years. Every day, she risks execution by given food and water to the silent friends and neighbors living above her.
Seeing her mother again, and what she’s done with her life after years of separation shocks her, shown with “When she looked up, I was overcome with panic that she’d see me and call out my name... And mom would introduce herself, and my secret would be out.” [Walls, 3]. She grew up, escaped, and put her poor childhood behind her.
Ann is isolated with no one to talk to, and has to resort to speaking to herself, slowly convincing herself in doubt, with no one to set her straight
She is talking to herself about how she must remain calm, and act natural, even though it is the last thing she wishes to do. “I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born”
The novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is about a girl named Melinda, who shows signs of depression throughout the story. She has no friends and is hated by people she doesn’t even know. This is because she called the cops at a party, where she was raped. Anderson includes literary elements to show how Melinda is depressed. Throughout the novel, she uses many different literary elements to show Melinda’s conflict.
Additionally, the narrator realizes her consciousness is constantly changing as she “loves the thing untouched by lore…the thing that is not cultivated… the thing built up” (473). The narrator’s consciousness faces another struggle between trying to find equal good in both the culture of her people and the new culture that has been introduced to her. Yet, she stands boldly “one foot in the dark, the other in the light” (473), as she forms a bridge between the two cultures and is stuck while she tries to understand her sense of self. Finally, the silent voice, a metaphor for her faith, calls out to her.
Knowing how to interact with people of other cultures has become an increasingly important issue as international communication and travel becomes more common. With more interactions between cultures, cultural misunderstandings become more common. The satirical book Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb attempts to address this issue, pointing out what people often do wrong. Fear and Trembling is a story which follows Amélie, a young Belgian woman who goes to work for a Japanese company and struggles to fit in, committing many cultural faux pas along the way. Nothomb uses contrasting sentence structure between Amélie 's thoughts and her dialogue and actions to demonstrate the way that Westerners often ignore other cultures despite knowing better because they view themselves as more important.
A silent voice by Yoshitoki Ōima, The book starts off with a new girl who went to a new school but when she was introducing herself to the class she wrote down on a notebook saying that she is deaf and hopes to get to know everyone and if people want to talk to her just write on her notebook. The teacher was telling people to read some sentence on the book he tells this one girl to speak up and then when he called on the deaf girl she tried to speak and the teacher called on someone else and it was a boy who hated her he made fun of how she was talking. There was some reason that the boy hated her reason 1 was that she gave him the creeps and reason 2 was that she dragged everyone else down with here her the third reason was that they all got tired of dealing with her. In choir she tried to sing but everyone could not sing well
