Obasan’s Text Analysisfrom chapter 30 to 39(Naomi’s Self Healing of Trauma)

400096093 Becky

Outline

• Study Questions• Text analysis (34,37 and 38)• Conclusion---feedback• Further discussion• Work Cited

Study Questions

• Does Naomi heal her trauma after she knows her mother’s death?

• How do you interpret Stephen’s response of Aunt Emily’s fighting with Canada’s government?

Identity

• Chapter 34, Naomi interrogates where is her homeland. Canada is not her homeland.

• “We come from the country that plucks its people out like weeds and flings them into the roadside. We grow in ditches and sloughs, untended and spindly” (271).

Naomi is questioning that she comes from a country which she doesn’t belong to ,“our hair wild as spider’s legs, out feet rooted nowhere” (271).

Identity

• “We grow where we are not seen, we flourish where we are not heard, the thick undergrowth of an unlikely planting” (271).

• With a Japanese’ appearance, Naomi never becomes a Canadian. Whatever she says , whatever she wants to express, her voice is never allowed to be heard by the real Canadians.

Exile

• “Where do we come from, Obasan?. . . We come from Canada, this land that is like every land, filled with the wise, the fearful, the compassionate, the corrupt” (271).

• Naomi thinks that every country has its good side. (the wise, the compassionate)

• And it also includes bad side “the fearful” and “the corrupt”. Japanese Canadians are minorities to Canadians, so they are bullied all the time.

• They are like flowers without root.

Plight

• Reading the passage from chapter 34, Naomi interrogates for identity which is related to the framework of racism. How does Naomi see herself??

• Canada is their home .It is a place where they live, but they are not treated like the real Canadians.

Naomi’s trauma• Chapter 37, it is the first time that Naomi knows how

her mother died. • “ That this world is brokenness. But within

brokenness is the unbreakable name. How the whole earth groans till love returns” (287).

• At this moment, Naomi is not thinking of forgiveness.• In chapter 37, Naomi is eager to be with her mother,

“[mother, I am listening. Assist me to hear you” (288).

• In chapter 38, after knowing how her mother died, Naomi has a strong feeling that she must be with her mother.

Silence

• Silent Mother, you do not speak or write. You do not reach through the night to enter morning but remain in the voicelessness. From the extremity of much dying, the only sound that reaches me now is the sigh of your remembered breath, a wordless word. How shall Iattend that speech, Mother, how shall I trace that wave? (289)

Reunion

• “You wish to protect us with lies, but the camouflage does not hide your cries. Beneath the hiding I am there with you. Silent Mother, lost in the abandoning, you do not share the horror” (290).

Naomi doesn’t want her mother to suffer the pain alone.

• “Mother, I see your face. Do not turn aside” (290).

Reunion

• “Gentle Mother, we were lost together in our silences. Our wordlessness was our mutual destruction” (291). Silence is the way that they maintain their relation.

• When Naomi looks at the picture, she feels that she becomes a part of her mother’s . “Your leg is a tree trunk and I am branch, vine, butterfly. I am jointed to your limbs by right of birth, child of your flesh, leaf of your bough” (291).

• At this moment, Naomi has a connection to her mother. They are not strangers.

Healing

• “We are abandoned yet we are not abandoned. You are present in every hell. Teach us to see Love’s presence in our abandonment. Teach us to forgive” (292).

• Sensei repeats saying forgiveness. And Naomi understands that she has to extricate herself from her mother’s death.

Healing• “But perhaps it is because I am no longer a child

I can know your presence though you are not here. The letters tonight are skeletons. Bones only. But the earth still stirs with dormant blooms. Love flows through the roots of the trees by our graves” (292).

• Death is the most unbearable thing in the world. With the help of love, people can overcome their grief. Love can heal the pain of trauma.

Conclusion• Naomi’s lacks her mother’s love in her childhood.

As a result, she always lacks confidence “[we] all hide our long names as well as we can” (241), and she always interrogates her identity. Finally, she realizes that her mother is dead. Naomi knows that her mother is always absent. Losing parents is heartache, for Naomi, it is the first time she feels she belongs to her mother.

• The process of mourning is grieved, but love and forgiveness can heal the trauma.

Further discussion

• Aunt Emily is always eager to advance a liberation of movement. She needs Stephen for the League because she needs “high-profile people”.

• “when we fight oppression, we’re fighting with the oppressed”.

• “He may well write a ballad, but the tune will be wrong. Stories without love are words without song”.

• Joy Kogawa ends the novel with an open ending. Aunt Emily is advancing her liberation movement. She summons up those Canadians’ minorities who is being oppressed. They need to be reminded of their plight in Canada. Although Stephen doesn’t want to help Aunt Emily, what she does is still proceeding. The story is moving on. Minorities have a positive attitude to face the difficulty. They are no longer keeping silence.

Work Cited

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Print.