As Naomi comes to terms with her trauma, she struggles to unlearn her culturally-ingrained impulse to ignore her own needs for the sake of others. Naomi’s elders teach her in her childhood that she must suppress her emotions for the sake of courtesy, and that “to try to meet one’s own needs in spite of the wishes of others is to be ‘wagamama’—selfish and inconsiderate.” This culture of appeasement and accommodation instills in Naomi an instinct for empathy, but it often crosses the line from selfless to needlessly self-sacrificial. At four years old, Naomi has so internalized the notion that “one does not resist adults” that she doesn’t know how to protest when Old Man Gower sexually abuses her. A few years later, when Mother leaves Naomi to tend to her own ailing grandmother in Japan, Naomi wonders why her need for her mother is less important than her great-grandmother’s. She questions the tradition of honoring others’ wishes before her own, but only internally, and she continues to live by this tradition into adulthood, even as she feels “weighted with decorum” that prevents her from living openly. This way of thinking is an obstacle in Naomi’s reckoning with the governmental abuses of her childhood, as early in the novel Naomi posits that the wartime imprisonment of Japanese Canadians might have been necessary to secure the comfort of white Canadians. Though Aunt Emily convinces her otherwise, that Naomi has this thought highlights the vulnerabilities of a culture that prioritizes politeness and selflessness to such an extent. Though these are admirable traits, the novel suggests that when selflessness and decorum are prioritized over personal security and dignity, they can lead to internalized acceptance of oppression.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Selflessness and Decorum ThemeTracker
Selflessness and Decorum Quotes in Obasan
The Custodian’s reply to Aunt Emily must have been the same to anyone else who dared to write. “Be good, my undesirable, my illegitimate children, be obedient, be servile, above all don’t send me any letters of inquiry about your homes, while I stand on guard (over your property) in the true north strong, though you are not free. B. Good.”
It is always so. 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 own needs in spite of the wishes of others is to be “wagamama”—selfish and inconsiderate. Obasan teaches me not to be wagamama by always heeding everyone’s needs. That is why she is waiting patiently beside me at this bridge. That is why, when I am offered gifts, I must first refuse politely. It is such a tangle trying to decipher the needs and intents of others.
And I am tired, I suppose, because I want to get away from all this. From the past and all these papers, from the present, from the memories, from the deaths, from Aunt Emily and her heap of words. I want to break loose from the heavy identity, the evidence of rejection, the unexpressed passion, the misunderstood politeness. I am tired of living between deaths and funerals, weighted with decorum, unable to shout or sing or dance, unable to scream or swear, unable to laugh, unable to breathe out loud.
(Keep your eyes down. When you are in the city, do not look into anyone's face. That way they may not see you. That way you offend less.)
This body of grief is not fit for human habitation. Let there be flesh. The song of mourning is not a lifelong song.
Father, Mother, my relatives, my ancestors, we have come to the forest tonight, to the place where the colors all meet––red and yellow and blue. We have turned and returned to your arms as you turn to earth and form the forest floor.
Tonight we picked berries with the help of your sighted hands. […] See how our stained fingers have read the seasons, and how our serving hands serve you still.
My loved ones, rest in your world of stone. Around you flows the underground stream.
