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Chapter 31
Themes
and Colors
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
The news Naomi received that day in the spring was of Father’s death, but she can’t make herself believe it until 1951, when she says the words out loud. That year, the Nakanes move off the Barkers’ property and into their own house. At the same time, Naomi begins high school, while Stephen is in his final year, and is composing a cantata with his music teacher. The Barkers ignored the Nakanes when they lived on the farm, but their daughter Penny Barker attends Naomi’s school and is vying for a part in Stephen’s cantata, so one day in December she asks Naomi to see the family’s new house. Naomi reluctantly invites her over. When Penny sees the old family photographs in the house, Naomi admits for the first time that her father is dead.
In her denial of Father’s death, Naomi enters the tradition of silence that her family practices. While her relatives shield her from the truth with silence, she hides from the truth herself by refusing to acknowledge her father’s death. Only by speaking the words aloud does she accept that Father is dead.
Active
Themes
Looking at the photographs makes Naomi think of Mother and Grandma Kato. Nakayama-sensei searched for them when he visited Japan after the war, but he found no trace of them. Stephen believes that they must be dead, since they would write to the family otherwise. Naomi writes to Aunt Emily, but Emily also insists that her sister and mother must be dead. Naomi eventually loses hope that Mother and Grandma Kato are alive, but she still occasionally imagines that they are. However, when Naomi looks through Emily’s box of documents in 1972, she finds letters that prove that Mother and Grandma Kato at least survived the war.
Active
Themes
