Obasan essay letters

The novel’s second epigraph, together with the title Obasan, reveals the most important theme of the novel: the struggle within Naomi between silence and speech. This epigraph, half a page long and very poetic, using delicate and reverent language, begins, “There is a silence that cannot speak.”

Fire is an ambiguous symbol that purges (the communal Japanese hot baths) but also destroys (the firestorm in Nagasaki which causes Nesan’s death). The novel’s second epigraph, together with the title Obasan, reveals the most important theme of the novel: the struggle within Naomi between silence and speech.

The word obasan means “aunt.” Naomi has not one aunt, but two. She has been reared by her Aunt Ayako, who lives at the time of the plot in small-town Granton, Alberta. Her Aunt Emily, a defiantly single woman, lives in cosmopolitan Toronto.

Much symbolism enhances Kogawa’s provocative story, which recounts a belated coming-of-age and discovery. It is told mainly from Naomi’s point of view, and readers must piece together information about the fate of her mother as she and Stephen are belatedly forced to face it, largely at the prompting of their very vocal aunt, Emily.