Motifs And Symbols In Obasan By Joy Kogawa

Obasan, written by Joy Kogawa, is a narrative account of a Japanese-Canadian family’s during World War II. The young protagonist, Naomi Nakane, witnesses her family break apart as it undergoes relocation that occurred in U.S. and Canada at the time. Although the theme of Obasan is primarily one of heroism, Kogawa’s employs subtle techniques to allude to the Works of Mercy and to affirm its universal values. The former was achieved by the literary elements and the latter by the novel’s form.

Kogawa employs motifs drawn from Christian rituals and symbols that form the basis of a subtle allusion to the Works of Mercy. For example, Naomi’s rediscovery of her family’s past through her family documents and letters is compared to the biblical story

of turning stone into bread. The correspondences and papers that reveal to Naomi her government’s abuse of its people are referred to as “stone-hard facts”.

Nevertheless Naomi also sees the “bread” out of those excruciating facts as they form a spiritual sustenance for Naomi’s people and herself.

In addition, the inner contradictions of characters in Obasan and its inconsistent aesthetic experiences in readers illuminate the deeper human motives that underlies the Works of Mercy. In major characters, for instance, duality is a prominent feature. Naomi is a Canadian, but rooted in Japanese. The Canadian government considers Japanese Canadian as its people, but passes policies that are inimical to them. The destructive power of the atomic bomb instantly kills countless lives including Naomi’s mother, but is offset by the experiences with mercy. The government fails to redress its wrongdoings, but major characters persevere in their integrity and loyalty to the government. The seemingly

irreconcilable dichotomy bespeaks the duality of human nature that can creates both good and evil. Yet, these dichotomies resist the formulaic and simplistic reduction of good and evil as if these values were the only basis for moral evaluation. In fact, the dichotomy is the ambiguity rather than the duality of our moral system. Kogawa sets up tension in the novel by mixing up conflicting systems of value that seem immoral only if the reader views one system exclusively from the other. She leads readers not only to moral consequences that are intellectually or ethically despicable and while the readers impulsively approve of, but also to the moral judgments that readers must accept as deductively valid yet find emotionally repulsive. The outcome is not only dramatic, but also tragic, for the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts are ours as much as they are the characters’. The reconciliation of good and evil only comes after the reader embraces a transcended universal moral values, that is the condemnation and forgiveness as in the Works of Mercy.
Finally, the novel takes the form that has the effect of affirming and professing the universal values in the Works of Mercy.

The form of the novel’s initiatory journey’s corresponds to the three-stage progression in the anthropological studies of rites of passage. The novel begins with alienation from a close-knit and securely placed niche as Naomi Nakane lives in her warm and joyful family within Vancouver. Then, the passage proceeds to isolation in a deathlike state in which Naomi is stripped of everything. Her family is removed from its previous social niche and exiled into concentration camps. Naomi is forced to separate with parents and sent to live with aunt Obasan. Finally, the journey concludes with reintegration accompanied by an elevated status as the result of the second stage. Naomi accepts the surrogate family and develops a recognition of her past. When she gets her family’s documents and letters, Naomi finally shatters the personal and cultural veils of reticence and secrecy that have clouded her past, and reconciles herself with the facts. The three-stage initiatory journey helps to transform the protagonist from a victim of the society to a hero. The protagonist transformation illuminates the values such as redemption of sins, willing forgiveness of offenses, and so forth. Along with its motifs and symbols that allude to Christian rituals, thus, the heroic figure, Naomi, serves as a role model and gives meaning and guidance to the lives of readers thereby

professing the universal values embodied in the Works of Mercy.