Survival of Fragmentary Identity, Fact

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Survival of Fragmentary Identity, Fact Fiction

• Obasan Chaps 15 - 29

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Outline

• Main Topics
• Fact and Fiction Emilys Responses again 25-29
• Fragmentation and Reconstruction (plot)
• Traumatic Responses (1) Nightmares
• Traumatic Responses (2) Childrens Stephen
• Kenji and the other boys
• Naomi

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• Main topics
• Fragmentation ? reconstruction
• Japanese Responses to trauma and racism
• Adults
• Childrens
• Their influences on Naomis sense of identity,
• Survival of the minorities communities
  (including Rough Lock Bills)

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Postmodern/Postcolonial Views of Traumatic History

• Grand Narrative
• its mode of narration authoritative, factual
  and singular-linear
• Its purpose of legitimation or bias disguised.
• Postcolonial/Postmodern Challenges of
  Master/Grand Narrative with
• Multiple perspectives, fragmentary (circular or
  repetitive) plotlines and frequently a space for
  the unknown (e.g. Atonement, Obasan)
• Alternative vision and re-vision to be
  re-inserted into official history (e.g. Obasan)

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Aunt Emilys Perspective

• Both Collecting Facts and Writing Personal and
  Public Responses
• Chap 7 9 visits, with the army, the navy, the
  air force of letters
• Official Documents Government pamphlets (Racial
  Discrimination by Orders-in-Council), newspaper
  clips, government notices
• The Story of the Nisei in Canada
• Chap14 diary describing
• their efforts made and frustration,
• the kids fear
• her hopelessness
• Their final decisions about where to go.

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Aunt Emilys Perspective (2)

• Chap 27 -- Emily's package and Discussion
• facts about not having a choice,
• Documents petitions from some missionaries,
  newspaper reports (about their solemnness),
• Memories of the futile efforts made against
  racist discrimination
• Being asked about Ns parents
• Chap 29
• Newspaper clips grinning and happy beet
  farmers ?? Naomis outburst of what she minds.
• News about restriction of their returning to BC
  extended one more year.
• Chap 32 government denial of grandmother and
  mothers re-entry.

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Naomis Perspective

• Pp. 180 chap 26 --fragmentation
• Remembered by Naomi while she reads Emilys
  documents (newspaper clips) and remembers what
  she said about the Japanese deprivation and
  fights. (e.g. chap 27)
• Chap 28 --displacement
• Lethbridge in the restaurant
• -- their hut
• Chap 29 (newspaper clips vs. the real experience)
• Chap 30 loss of parents experience of school
  children rejecting their Japanese names
  (including Annie Black Bear 202) ? rejecting
  their cultural identity

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Poetic Sublimation

• 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

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Poetic Sublimation 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 Dignity Asserted

3 generations Identity Asserted --disappearing

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Restraint and Silent Attentiveness Japanese
Responses to the Others

• (chap 18 128) None of us spokewhen 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 ones needs in spite of the wishes of
  others is to be wagamama.
• ? Momotaroto act with a fine intent Mothers
  alert and accurate knowing (56)
• Momotaro as a Canadian story

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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. Noamis chap 15
• 118 121-- two-roomed log hut at the base of a
  mountain like a giant toadstool
• (???) when seen from afar.
• Chap 20 Slocan is greening
• the yard. --23 160 stores

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Fragmentation Reconstruction by Naomi

• Chap 7 Emilys packageher 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, Ns ad Ss responses
• Chap 16 the trip to and arrival at Slocan,
  Stephens violent reaction
• Chap 17 Nomura-Obasans difficulties, Goldilock?

• 1972
• 1942 train to Slocan

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fragmentation Reconstruction

• 1942
• 1943
• (attend school)

• Chap 18 Grandma Nakanes 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 Naomis drowning

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fragmentation Reconstruction

• Chap 22 -- experiences of hospital and deaths
  (chicken, kitten)
• Chap 23 -- bathing and discrimination
• Chap 24 -- father back
• Chap 25 -- prayer before departure
• Chap 26 -- leaving Slocan

• 1943
• 1945
• 1945 to Alberta Ethridge, and then Granton,
  Barker Farm--

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fragmentation Reconstruction (for next time)
"Aunt Emily, are you a surgeon cutting at my
scalp with your folders and filing cards and your
insistence on knowing all?"

• 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

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The Adults adaptation

• (Chap 21) Rough Lock Bill slow can go p. 146
• (end of chap 19-chap 20) The uncles return, his
  garden (chap 23) a crowded collage of memories
  (e.g. the piano, Xmas concerts, etc.)
• Local community Chap 23
• Stores (160)
• public bathhouse like a hazy happy dream (vs.
  internal discrimination 162-65)
• The return of the fathera transient reunion

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Childrens 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?

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Responses (1) Stephens

• Repression and Limp (a psychosomatic response to
  constraint)
• Transference Violent response Violent to the
  butterflies (end of chap 16)
• Denial Focuses on the gramophone music, ignores
  Numura-obasan (chap 17)
• Denial Refuses to go to the wake of Grandma
  Nakane (chap 18)
• 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 Ive got to
  get out of here (33 219-220)

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Childrens 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)

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Childrens Responses (3) Naomis

• As a kid
• Fails to understand (A riddleboth 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

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Childrens Responses (3) Naomis (2) as a victim

• In 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)

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Childrens Responses (3) Naomis images of fairy
tales uncertain and mixed identities

• (Chap 11end) Snow White unable to run. (He,
  the forest full of eyes and arms)
• chap 17 -- Goldilock
• chap 24 -- The fathers 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
  hearts 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

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Racism Victims and Victimizers

• The chicken episodes 11 22
• Unknowing victimizers Chap 11 Ns 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
• Victims turning victimizers Chap 22 Chicken
  peril game yellow chicken, yellow pawn 152gt
  death of white chicken, kitten (157)
• Images of Victimizer
• King bird// airplane (152)
• Images Chap 27(end) giant hawk over a chicken
  yard (188)

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Childrens Responses the use of animal imagery

• Chicken yellow ? Japanese victims e.g.
• 14 89 Sugimoto 17 125 Nomura --like a
  plucked bird
• mothers hands quick as birds (26)
• Stephen, after the casts being removed, hops
  about hesitant as a spring robin (137)
• 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

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Childrens Responses the use of fairy tale

• Goldilock chap 17
• Is Naomi
• Goldilocks, who plunders into somebody elses
  house, or
• the little bear whose food and bed are taken?

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Traumatic Responses Nightmares

• Nightmares chaps 6 end of 11 20 22, 35
• a grown-ups
• (chap 6) the two couples work at some unknown but
  necessary task. basic survival woman aging,
  will become Naomi, Aunt Ayathe mother
• (chap 11) 3 Oriental women, becoming seductive
  as a weapon
• Next time --(chap 35)nightmare about parents,
  soldiers and the Grand Inquisitor
• a childs
• (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

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Naomi as an Adultstill traumatized

• Thirst for knowledge 1 3
• Confusion beginning of chapter 15
• Emotional Outburst chap 29