Fragmentary Identity, Racism and Survival

Obasan Chaps 15 - 25

Outline Main Topics Fragmentation and Reconstruction (plot) Children’s Responses: Passages for close analysis Children’s Responses to Racism:

• Stephen

• Kenji and the other boys

• Naomi

Reconstruction of the community Next Time

Main topics: • Fragmentation reconstruction

• Children’s responses to racism,

• Their influences on Naomi’s sense of identity,

• Survival of the minorities’ communities (including Rough Lock Bill’s)

Fragmentation to Reconstruction Beginning of Chap 15 “We are the hammers and chisels in the hands of

would be sculptors, battering the spirit of the sleeping mountain. We are the chips and sand, the fragments of fragments that fly like arrows from the heart of the rock. We are the silences that speak from stone. We are the despised rendered voiceless, stripped of car, radio, camera and every means of communication, a trainload of eyes covered with mud and spittle. We are the man in the Gospel of John, born into the world for the sake of the light. We are sent to Siloam, the pool called “Sent”. We are sent to the sending, that we may bring sight.

Tools

fragments

scapegoat as savior

Fragmentation to Reconstruction Beginning of Chap 15 … We are the scholarly and the illiterate, the

envied and the ugly, the fierce and the docile. We are those pioneers who cleared the bush and the forest with our hands, the gardeners tending and attending the soil with our tenderness, the fishermen who are flung from the sea to flounder in the dust of the prairies..

We are the Issei and the Nisei and the Sansei, the Japanese Canadians. We disappear into the future undemanding as dew.

Kinds

Pioneers

3 generations --disappearing

Fragmentation to Reconstruction Chap 15 Relocation – the Japanese are sorted out and

placed in some run-down huts in some ghost towns. “like dung drops. Maggot bait.”

e.g. Noami’s – chap 15 118; 121-- two-roomed log hut at the base of a mountain; like a giant toadstool (毒蘑菇 ) when seen from afar.

Chap 20: Slocan is “greening”; the yard.

Fragmentation & Reconstruction by Naomi

1972

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|

1942 train to Slocan

Chap 7: Emily’s package—her last visit and the question if Naomi wants to know “everything”

Chap 9: starts to remember –photo (as a fragment of fragments)

Chap 15: leaving for Slocan, N’s ad S’s responses

Chap 16: the trip to and arrival at Slocan, Stephen’s violent reaction

Chap 17: Nomura-Obasan’s difficulties, Goldilock?

fragmentation & Reconstruction

1942

| 1943

(attend school)

Chap 18: Grandma Nakane’s death, wake and cremation,

Chap 19: Uncle back, questions about the father, Stephen out of his cast

Chap 20: back to school, vegetable garden, Rough Lock Bill, Kenji and the red insect

Chap 21: Naomi’s drowning

fragmentation & Reconstruction

1943

|

1945

1945 to Alberta Ethridge, and then Granton, Barker Farm--

Chap 22 -- experiences of hospital and deaths (chicken, kitten)

Chap 23 -- bathing Chap 24 -- father back Chap 25 -- prayer before

departure; Chap 26 -- leaving Slocan

fragmentation & Reconstruction (for next time)

1945 to Alberta Ethridge, and then Granton, Barker Farm

Chap 26 -- leaving Slocan (p. 179 – Chap 27 -- Emily's package (last year

of the present); facts about not having a choice, documents that show racism (send them back home)

Chap 28 -- 1945 Lethbridge restaurant--Granton

Chap 29 -- experience of fly and dust-v.s. documents

Chap 30 -- Granton school p. 200 Chap 31 -- the swamp; a frog with a

broken leg; revelation of father's death

"Aunt Emily, are you a surgeon cutting at my scalp with your folders and filing cards and your insistence on knowing all?"

Fragmentation: Nightmares Nightmares– chaps 6; end of 11; 20; 22, 35 (Group 1)

a grown-up’s: • (chap 6) the two couples work at some unknown but necessary ta

sk. –basic survival; woman aging, will become Naomi, Aunt Aya—the mother

• (chap 11) 3 Oriental women, becoming seductive as a weapon• (chap 35)--nightmare about parents, soldiers and the Grand

Inquisitor

a child’s: • (end of chap 11) childhood dream of bodily fragmentation and

separation from the mother; • (end of chap 20) “a red bird, tiny as an insect, trapped in a

whirling well” • (chap 22) father = chicken =I in a hospital. [end of chap 22]

chicken = kitten = child • (chap 24) asleep or awake – mother 167

Racism: Victims and Victimizers

The chicken episodes: 11 & 22 (group 2: Joyce , Lisa , Ruth, Emily , Pova , Wendy, E....)

Chap 11: N’s causing the hen to peck the chicks to death

(N like a small animal, staying still 62-63) Chap 22: chicken in the hospital 150 “the death day” Chap 22: Chicken peril game: yellow chicken, yellow

pawn 152=> death of chicken, kitten (157) King bird// airplane (152) Chap 27(end): giant hawk over a chicken yard (188)

Children’s Responses: the use of animal imagery

Chicken yellow Japanese victims e.g.

• mother’s hands “quick as birds” (26);

• Stephen, after the cast’s being removed, hops about “hesitant as a spring robin” (137);

• Nomura-obasan “like a plucked bird” (125);

• in Granton, the family members cling to the stove for warmth and “rotate like chickens on a spit” (195)

• Chicken little –worried about the falling of the sky

Children’s Responses: the use of fairy tale Goldilock chap 17 (group 3)

Is Naomi Goldilocks, who plunders into somebody else’s house, or the little bear whose food and bed are taken?

Restraint and Silent Attentiveness: Japanese Responses to the Others

(chap 18: 128) “None of us spoke[when grandmother and grandfather left for Denver Hospital]. … We must always honor the wishes of others before our own. We will make the way smooth by restraining emotion. Though we might wish Grandma and Grandpa to stay, we must watch them go. To try to meet one’s needs in spite of the wishes of others is to be “wagamama.”

Momotaro—to act with a fine intent; Mother’s “alert and accurate knowing” (56)

Momotaro as a Canadian story

Children’s Responses to Displacement, Fragmentation & Racism

Responses – repression (escape), transference (confusion) and repetition compulsion

How do Naomi and Stephen respond differently to the departure? (chap 15)

How are the children in this novel related to nature (animals)?

How does the novel depict the relations between the victims and victimizers?

Besides images of nature, how are different fairy tales used to convey what Noami feels?

Responses (1): Stephen’s

1. Repression and Limp (a psychosomatic response to constraint)

2. Transference: Violent response: Violent to the butterflies (end of chap 16);

3. Denial: Focuses on the gramophone music, ignores Numura-obasan (chap 17);

4. Denial: Refuses to go to the wake of Grandma Nakane (chap 18);

5. Adjustment: Off the cast, gallop in the mountains (chaps 19 -20)

• Stephen as Humpty Dumpty chap 15, 19 (pp. 115, 136)

• Later: waking from a dream, he says: “I’ve got to get out of here” (33: 219-220)

Children’s Responses (2): Kenji –false assertion of power and lack of responsibility

(chap 20) impulsive act of destruction: The red insect; – tosses the stick

Assertion of power: His stories about The King bird (“cut your tongue in half if you tell lies”) and Rough Lock Bill (that he sat in his cabin)

Power vs. powerlessness: (chap 21) his raft and his glasses; p. 148: orders Naomi to jump into the lake.

Note: Naomi: quietly observant (e.g. beginning of chap 21)

Children’s Responses (3): Naomi’s As a kid:

• Fails to understand (A riddle—both enemy and not enemy: end of Chap 12); fear Chap 13 (73);

• Sense of guilt; Old Man Gower (end of Chap 11)

On the train: playing with her dolls to divert herself. (chap 15: 114-116)

Chap 16: loses her dolls

Children’s Responses (3): Naomi’s (2): as a victimIn Slocan: Quiet (chap 21) Naomi as a victim and her guilt of being

complicit or helpless • like a red insect chap 21,p. 140, 142 , fear of King

bird

• little yellow chicken vs. white fairies chap 22• Faces brutalities and death without being able to do

anything about them: e.g. The death day (chap 22); The kitten in the outhouse (end of chap 22)

Children’s Responses (3): Naomi’s images of fairy tales – uncertain and mixed identities

(Chap 11—end) Snow White unable to run. (He, the forest full of eyes and arms)

chap 17 -- Goldilock chap 24 -- The father’s return--[later chap 24: 170]:

“‘We do not talk. His hands cup my face. I wrap my arms about his neck…. I can feel his heart’s steady thump thump thump. I am Minne and Winnie in a sea shell, resting on a calm sea-shore. I am Goldilocks, I am Momotaro returning. I am leaf in the wind restored to its branch, child of my father come home. The world is safe once more and Chicken Little is wrong. The sky is not falling down.’”

chap 26 train station: “a forest of legs and bodies”

The Adults’ adaptation (Chap 21) Rough Lock Bill slow can go p. 146 (end of chap 19-chap 20) The uncle’s return, his

garden; (chap 23) a crowded collage of memories (e.g. the piano, X’mas concerts, etc.)

Local community Chap 23:• Stores (160) • public bathhouse “like a hazy happy dream”

(vs. internal discrimination 162-65) The return of the father—a transient reunion

For next time

0.5 -- Obasan Chap 26-31 -- Naomi’s experience in Alberta vs. Emily’s documents

0.5 -- "The Man Who Would be King"

0.5 -- chap 4: Orientalism and its Revision pp. 271-285 (or 281)