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Summary Of The Novel 'Obasan' By Joy Kogawa

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The first impressions of the novel were not positive. “Obasan” by Joy Kogawa was published in 1981 and has a lot of meaning towards racism that occurred in Canada. Kogawa’s novel draws the relationship between Japanese and Canadians during the world War Two in the reader’s mind and describes how hard it was for Japanese people to live in Canada during that period. One of the biggest themes the author uses is “Silence”. To find the theme silence is quite easy as it can be found everywhere in the novel. In Japan, being silent can be analyzed as manners but on the other hand it can be described as suffering because the symbolism of silence might display suffering from a racist society but are finding their own way to beat it. Throughout the novel, …show more content…

One of the famous philosophers Socrates calls these lies as “noble lies”. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that there are two types of lies: one is a normal lie and the other is a noble lie. It is a necessary lie and a noble lie is based on justice (Socrates, book 7).
According to Socrates, Obasan’s deception to Naomi about her father can be seen as necessary in order to make her less mournful. From the book, it is clear that Naomi’s life was not that easy because her neighbor abuses her, which inevitably leads to rape. Her mother disappears when she was young without telling her, and Obasan knows that Naomi was having an extremely hard time. Obasan’s silence was a necessary deception but at the same time Naomi learned more things through Obasan’s silence than her words. As reported by Shin from Shih Chien University, she comments that “Though silence surrounds Naomi, eventually she will comprehend that silence implicates a far richer vastness than what words can express” (Shin, 6). To be more specific, Obasan knows that telling Naomi the truth will hurt her feelings, so by lying to her using silence she can avoid giving her more pain thus, the deceptive lie to Naomi was a noble lie. As a final point, Obasan’s silence benefits herself in order to protect herself from the racial society and also it benefits others and helps them understand more by using

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143 Words | 1 Pages

Obasan written by Joy Kogawa is a moving novel translating the silence breaching upon the Japanese Canadians during the late 1940s. Obasan is a novel that looks back towards the discrimination and prejudice through the hidden Canadian History. The perspective of the story is told in first person of the main character, Naomi. Kogawa’s literary style brings life to characters such as naomi, describing her experience of silence and cultural separation with just only words. Living through first perspective not only reveals detailed imagery of the surrounding, but the beliefs, thoughts and fears of Naomi.

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1467 Words | 6 Pages

Naomi finds herself unable to speak to her mother, Nesan, as a child about the sexual assault she is a victim of, which puts Nesan “on one side of a rift” and Naomi “on the other” (Kogawa 77). Naomi’s silence is representative of how the Canadian government acted as Naomi’s assailant did: “A man going out in public and presenting a public face of decency when privately there is atrocity” (Clayton). Kogawa comments on how citizens could have protested in the same way as Naomi’s Aunt Emily, who pushes back against the Canadian government so the family “could all stay together” (Kogawa 109). Instead, citizens attempted to show their loyalty by accepting the government’s conditions. Naomi’s obasan is one of those who accepts their grim situation and works to conceal their drab living conditions for the children.

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1688 Words | 7 Pages

In Obasan, Joy Kogawa highlights the emotional trauma that came with the decision by the Canadian government under Prime Minister Mackenzie King to intern immigrants of Japanese ancestry, even if they held Canadian citizenship. Kogawa is able to convey her points with usage of flashbacks to the period between 1941 and 1949, when the interment took place while the main setting of the story takes place in 1972. The fact that the main storyline takes place in 1972 and the book was published in 1981 underlines the fact that in the 1970s and 1980s, these issues had become a larger point of focus in Canadian society, especially because Canada did not have a true sense of national identity in how it viewed itself. Overall, the novel reveals much about

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889 Words | 4 Pages

“I had nearly outgrown the shame and the guilt and the sense of unworthiness. This visit, this pilgrimage, made comprehensible, finally, the traces that remained and would always remain, like a needle.” The text Farewell To Manzanar, written by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, embellishes Jeanne’s experience while being placed in an internment camp. Jeanne’s family faced with various obstacles through the process of being evacuated from their home to living in an internment camp. Throughout the text, Jeanne also explains how her life was full of hardships compared to how she perceived the lives of Caucasians.. Though the American Government was afraid that Japanese-Americans were potential saboteurs, there’s no justified for interning them because it was not equitable to blame a whole society on a small portion action’s, the families were not equipped with the proper care and attention, and the Japanese-American children were faced with racism that they could not withstand.

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763 Words | 4 Pages

Naomi's parent and family members kept the truth from Naomi and her brother because they considered them too young to know the truth. As a result, this act of silence hinders Naomi from discovering the truth about her mother's disappearance. Naomi's mother and Obasan remained quiet because they believed that was the only way to survive in a harsh world. Naomi declares, "Silent Mother, you do not speak or write. you do not reach through the night to enter morning, but remain in voicelessness."

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1033 Words | 5 Pages

Deception is common place within our society. Nobody is perfect and more often than not, someone will try cheating to gain an advantage. This is evident especially in the political system, but can even trickle all the way down to something as innocent as stealing a cookie from a cookie jar. The question may arise whether deception is just lying or rather it also includes withholding the truth. In reality, when we withhold the truth from a person, we are altering the view of what is true for that person.

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1122 Words | 5 Pages

In Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, some might argue that Odysseus’s dishonesty and deceit cause loss of trust and negative consequences. However, Odysseus’s dishonesty and deceit do not always have bad intentions, it can be seen when Odysseus and his men escaped out of Polyphemus’s cave to get out of trouble and when Odysseus received help from his men to get closer to their objective. While lying is looked down upon, people

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217 Words | 1 Pages

Stephanie Ericsson, someone intrigued by the subject of lying, targets middle-aged adults with families in "The Ways We Lie. " She wants them to realize the different ways that everyone can lie in order to see when they are being deceived and not allow it. By putting herself on the same level as her audience, she allows the audience to know that they can empathize with each other. She appeals to the audience 's values about how lying has a bad connotation to it so they feel confused.

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882 Words | 4 Pages

Out of Touch With Society To some people, loosing a simple item can unleash a typhoon of emotions. People will panic at the thought of misplacing their phones or forgetting when they last wore their favorite shirt. These accessory losses are little to nothing compared to the loss the Japanese American people suffered during the second World War. Julie Otsuka, a recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Asian American Literary Award, the American Library Association Alex Award, wrote a novel based on her own family history.

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82 Words | 1 Pages

Joy Kogawa's Obasan was able to reveal Canada's assumptions and moral values through the alienation of its main character, Naomi Nakane. Naomi's first encounter with the distancing effect of alienation when she is still a child. During school, one of her classmates tell her, The fact that a little girl is saying thi tells us that she may have heard this from her parents or other authority figures, which implies that some portion Canadian society assumes its own citizens are a

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1063 Words | 5 Pages

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus uses lies as a protective disguise against strangers. Not only does Odysseus utilize lies to keep his identity a secret but also, through the use of specific language, he conveys unspoken points. These points invoke different feelings and opinions in the people to whom he lies. Odysseus can quickly tailor his lies depending on the person and the situation he is in. Odysseus’s skill of creating intricate falsehoods and his use of lies as a way of controlling the thoughts of person he’s lying to, reveals his exceptional tact and guile.

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1146 Words | 5 Pages

The evil humans possess and use is a major theme in life and stories. The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor, and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson all have these themes. The Veldt reveals the dark thoughts of children when the kids, Wendy and Peter, have their parents constantly being eaten by lions in their nursery. O'Connor shows the manipulative, evil side of Manly Pointer when he steals Hulga’s leg and shows how his personality contrasts and compares with the wide-eyed country girl in Good Country People.

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1113 Words | 5 Pages

The narrative perspectives of Silence complicate readers’ judgement about Rodrigues’ decision to apostatize. The first four chapters, each of which titled Letter of Sebastian Rodrigues, are narrated from Rodrigues’ point of view. His voice vanishes, however, with the ellipsis at the end of Chapter Four; instead, an omniscient narrator emerges. When readers see Japan through Rodrigues’ eyes, they are reading his mind at the same time. Yet, the omniscient narrator estranges Rodrigues from readers, who can access his thoughts now only by speculations.

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967 Words | 4 Pages

According to Socrates, the difference between a “true” lie and a lie in words is that a lie in words is apparent while a true lie is real. When a true lie is concerned, a person’s whole character is oriented to a world that doesn’t exist. The character’s soul can be changed for evil. Meanwhile, a lie in words is the noble lie.

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1190 Words | 5 Pages

Stephanie Ericsson begins her explorative essay, “The Ways We Lie,” with a personal anecdote of all the lies she fabricated in one day. She told her bank that a deposit was in the mail when it was not, told a client that the traffic had been bad when she was late for other reasons, told her partner that her day was fine when it was really exhausting, and told her friend she was too busy for lunch when she just was not hungry, all in the course of a day. She shifts from talking about herself to talking about everyone, claiming that all people lie, exaggerate, minimize, keep secrets, and tell other lies. But, like herself, most still consider themselves honest people. She describes a week in which she tried to never tell a lie; it was debilitating, she claims.

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