Essay On The Past In Joy Kogawa's 'Obasan'

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Recommended: 20th century gender roles in literature

What happens in a person’s past is what shapes who they are in the future. In Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan, Naomi Nakane looks toward the past to understand what really happened in her youth which positively affected her adulthood. Like her grandparents, Naomi generally chooses to leave the past in the past and forget everything. She may not opposed to thinking about the past, but she prefers to keep the past in the past. Her aunt named Emily left letters to her sister, Naomi’s mother. However, with her Aunt Emily’s letters and her own self-reflection, Naomi finally decided to look within herself and see her history for what it really was. She sees her transformation from a guarded child to a more transparent adult. As a child, Naomi is quiet. She does not say much to anybody, whether they are strangers or her family. Even though her family tries to get her to interact with them more, especially her mother, she still seems to be an outsider. Naomi does not engage …show more content…

Unlike her older brother Stephen, she does not get to know about anything that is going on with her family or the war. “To try to meet one’s needs in spite of the wishes of others is to be ‘wagamama’ -- selfish and inconsiderate” (Kogawa, 151). Naomi has seen her whole life how the concept of “wagamama” has affected Obasan to the point that she puts everybody’s needs over her own. Naomi was also sexually assaulted or molested as a child by a neighbor named Old Man Gower. While she knew what was happening was wrong, Naomi repressed her feelings and did not tell her mother or anyone else. The molestation was both pleasurable and disgusting to Naomi and she carries her burden of guilt alone. Overall, Naomi’s rumination of the past leads her to wonder about how it has affected her as an adult. She went from a child who was unable or unwilling to vocalize her feelings to an adult who

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