Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Obasan, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race, Identity, and Citizenship
History and Memory
Speech vs. Silence
Selflessness and Decorum
Summary
Analysis
After the war, former prisoners of Japanese internment camps make up 65% of laborers in Alberta’s beet farms, and the Nakanes are among that number as they work at the Barker family farm in Granton. They live in constant hardship. The labor is brutal, the hut (which was formerly a chicken coop) is infested with bugs and offers no temperature regulation, and the family are always too exhausted or too spread out over the fields to talk to each other or anyone else. The adult Naomi recalls all this, venting her rage at the situation by repeating that she “minds” each indignity and moment of pain. After a few years of this, Uncle stops talking about going home.
Naomi finally articulates her anger at the indignities her family suffered. She refuses to passively accept what happened, admitting to herself that she does in fact “mind” the appalling conditions she and her family endured in the 1940s. These conditions degraded the only thing the Nakanes had left––their hope.
Themes
In 1948, the House of Commons bans Japanese Canadians from returning to British Columbia for another year. Though some politicians vocally oppose this, the policy’s defenders argue that they are acting not out of racial prejudice but out of concern for national security and the security of Japanese Canadians. Naomi looks through Emily’s documentation of this and finally cries for all that her family has lost. Still, Naomi thinks that her tears can’t undo what has been done, and she believes that “it will all happen again” countless more times.
Emily’s documents force Naomi to confront both the truth of her past and the depth of her feelings about it. To follow Obasan’s example of stoic dignity, Naomi has not let herself openly grieve what she and her family have lost. However, Naomi differs from Emily in her belief in the efficacy of mourning. Emily believes that the act of recognizing the past is in itself an act of advocacy, while Naomi believes that her grief won’t prevent injustice from repeating itself.
Themes
