obasan essays

Obasan essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Obasan by Joy Kogawa. GradeSaver provides access to 678 study guide PDFs and quizzes, 3593 literature essays, 1203 sample college application essays, 123 lesson plans, and ad-free surfing in this premium content, “Members Only” section of the site! Membership includes a 10% discount on all editing orders. Join Now Log in HomeLiterature EssaysObasan Earle Birney’s poem “Anglosaxon Street” and Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan both present a powerful critique of modern life, though the former is delivered through sarcastic humor while the latter is portrayed through poignant emotions. Modernity in “. In the novel Obasan, by Joy Kogawa, the narrator recounts her experience of being relocated to the internment camps during the Second World War. During this time period the Japanese Canadians were considered enemies to all. Consequently, they were. Copyright © 1999 - 2016 GradeSaver LLC. Not affiliated with Harvard College.
Enter Your Search Terms to Get Started! The Theme of Motherhood in Obasan Chinese writer Lin Yutang once said, “Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.” However, the word mother does not always apply to a woman who gives birth to a child, but a woman who gives maternal love and tenderness. The role of mother in the novel Obasan was passed down to the three main female figures of the novel. Naomi’s biological mother, Obasan and Aunt Emily each took equal part in the raising of Naomi and Stephen in their unique ways. Naomi’s mother actions and manner of life makes her a good mother figure for the children in the novel. Naomi’s mother shows great compassion with her children and all other things. Compassion is an essential trait that one would most likely need to be a good mother. However, Naomi’s mother displays her affection differently than what we may normally consider compassion. She shows it as a Japanese mother. “Her eyes are steady and matter of fact – the eyes of Japanese motherhood. They do not invade and invade. They are eyes that protect, shielding what is hidden most deeply in the heart of the child. She makes safe the small stirrings underfoot and in the shadows.”(Kogawa, 63) By showing compassion within her subtleties, Naomi’s mother shows signs of motherhood. Another trait that people feel that a mother must possess is commitment to one’s family. Naomi’s mother is very committed to her family, both extended and immediate. Whether she needs to be whisked away to Japan to take care of her cousin or watching her children play music, she is there. “Here they are in the music room in the evening, before dark, Mother in her chair beside Stephen who sits on the piano stool with its eagle-claw feet clutching three glass globes.” (55) Naomi’s mother is committed to her family growing up right. She is involved with them every step of the way.
This student essay consists of approximately 3 pages of analysis of Obasan. This section contains 677 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) Obasan: Changing the Past with Perspective and Style Summary: Discusses how the author changes perspective and style in the novel Obasan by Joy Kogawa. In Joy Kogawa's novel Obasan, the author's changing perspective and style presents the author's past memories with different attitudes. In Kogawa's first passage, Kogawa implements metaphoric language and first person plural perspective creating coherency and emotion in the passage. Lines such as we are the scholarly and the illiterate, the envied and the ugly, the fierce and the docile (Kogawa ln.19-21), give the reader the sense of desolation and suffering. The reader feels more of the emotion because the metaphoric language helps the reader to understand the author's feelings and relate her experiences to the reader's own past. Because of the fact that the metaphoric language implicitly compares Kogawa's feelings and emotions to an improbable situation, Kogawa helps her reader to profoundly understand a past that he or she has never experienced, making it possible for her readers to be farther involved in her past. Also, in. (read more) This section contains 677 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) Copyrights Obasan: Changing the Past with Perspective and Style from BookRags. (c)2016 BookRags, Inc. All rights reserved.
Simply enter your paper topic to get started! Joy Kogawa's Obasan 2 Pages 615 Words November 2014 Saved essays Save your essays here so you can locate them quickly! Topics in this paper Popular topics In Obasan, Joy Kogawa makes the ending of the novel suitable for the plot because it concludes the story on a hopeful note. Kogawa creates a very appropriate ending to the novel by allowing Naomi to discover the truth about her mother after several years of not hearing anything about her. She also completes the ending by inserting the 1946 memo written by the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians. The importance of Naomi finding out about her mother was incredibly important because the majority of the story revolves around the memories she holds of her mother. The novel is greatly concerned with the formation and retention of family bonds, but since Naomi hardly recalls her mother, she has a hard time retaining that family bond. For a very long time, Naomi suffers with the remote memories of her mother because she desperately wishes to hear an explanation to why she left and to why she never returns. When Naomi discovers that her mother is injured and awfully scarred because she is present in the bombing in Nagasaki, she begins to feel a greater connection between her mother and herself. In the end, Naomi quite insistently declares she feels a supernatural connection to her deceased mother, as if she is still present somehow. Naomi must talk herself into feeling her mother’s presence because she has practically nothing else to go on. Through this ending, however, Kogawa is able to demonstrate the peace and serenity that overtake Naomi when she finally understands the truth. The ending also allows Obasan to be in peace with herself because she no longer has to keep the secret from Naomi and her brother. This part of the ending is a perfectly suitable conclusion to.
In one way, Old Man Gower’s effect on Naomi is devastating. He abuses her terribly and repeatedly when she is little more than a toddler. He separates her from her mother just as dramatically as her mother’s departure for Japan does. He also alienates her from Stephen, from whom she must keep this terrible secret. He makes her feel, at the age of four, that she is alone in the world and can confide in no one. He elicits feelings of horror in her, but he also elicits pleasurable sensations, and for that she feels ashamed and disgusted with herself. He imprints in her mind the conviction that men are not to be trusted. We know that Naomi does not have a husband or boyfriend, and that she feels pessimistic about her chances of finding love. It may be that Old Man Gower’s abuse scarred Naomi permanently, making her unable to trust potential partners. At the same time, though, Old Man Gower’s effect on Naomi seems transitory, and that is cause both for celebration and for grief. As an adult, Naomi is not fixated on the sexual abuse she suffered. She does not despise men or believe that all men have the capacity to commit acts of great evil. She devotes a few chapters to the abuse, but she does not circle back to it again and again as she does to, say, the disappearance of her mother. It is one terrible episode in a childhood full of terrible episodes. Yet while Naomi’s ability to put Old Man Gower behind her is a happy relief, it is a mixed blessing. She forgets him because she must. Larger problems blot out what would be, for most women, a defining tragedy. We might say that Naomi does not have the luxury of thinking about Old Man Gower and feeling furious about what he did to her. Matters of basic survival—whether she will have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and physical protection—subsume questions about a disaster that is safely in the past. Chicks and chickens.
Much symbolism enhances Kogawa’s provocative story, which recounts a belated coming-of-age and discovery. It is told mainly from Naomi’s point of view, and readers must piece together information about the fate of her mother as she and Stephen are belatedly forced to face it, largely at the prompting of their very vocal aunt, Emily. Though aggressive, Emily is also compassionate, concerned for the well-being of her immediate family and for all Japanese whose story she believes must be told repeatedly and insistently. The story describes how Naomi, reared by the “silent” pair Ayako and Isamu, becomes transformed into an informed and more assertive adult, ready to speak out. In the narrative frame that opens and closes the book, Naomi is either eating or serving or contemplating Uncle Isamu’s “stone bread,” for which he has developed quite a reputation in the Japanese community. It is tough and hard, and Stephen does not like it, but at the same time it is nurturing. The stone bread symbolizes the hardships endured by the Japanese, as well as the community spirit that helps them stick together and buoy one another. The first of the novel’s two epigraphs imparts to Isamu’s bread a religious significance. In a quote from the Bible, the bread becomes “the hidden manna,” which points to religion in general, and Christianity in particular, as a dominant theme in the book. Kogawa herself was reared a Christian, and her minister father is the model for Reverend Nakayama. Among the Christian rituals and symbols that she makes use of in the book are Easter and the Eucharist. Two childhood incidents involving Easter chicks are used to illustrate how helpless the yellow baby chicks (the Japanese Canadians) are when they are pecked to death by a white hen (the Canadian government). Fire is an ambiguous symbol that purges (the communal Japanese hot baths) but also destroys (the.