Obasan Sparknotes

Obasan by Joy Kogawa illustrates the emotional turmoil experienced by Japanese Canadians during World War II as they were placed in internment camps, using descriptive imagery to detail a variety of complex themes such as grief and silence. The novel reflects AP standard literature due to its connection to World War II and its consequences on Japanese Canadians many years afterwards, which are executed through the use of descriptive imagery and artistic metaphors. Obasan tells the story of Naomi Nakane, a schoolteacher who recalls her experiences during World War II as a young Japanese girl in Canada. Naomi also discusses journal entries written by her Aunt Emily which depict the very first moments of the removal of Japanese Canadians as well

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. Milton asserts that, throughout Obasan, Kogawa reveals “a much larger pattern of atrocity and death, and of endurance and survival” (Milton), achieved through the imagery that depicts Naomi’s emotional turmoil. Similarly, Kogawa implements powerful metaphors to present the atrocities and racial conflict of World War II without the use of simple, objective statements. For example, Naomi recalled a moment from her childhood in which her mother bought baby chicks that were killed by a hen shortly after being placed in a cage with them. She compares the hen’s actions as “deliberate as