Today, society has become a boisterous world of communication. From telephone conversations to live Internet chat and e-mail, the world has never before been quite so in touch. In the novel Obasan, by Joy Kogawa, Naomi Nakane does not have technology to communicate. Instead, she faces the dilemma of communicating at all. From her family, Naomi is shown the many faceted truths of speech and communication. From strong, silent Obasan, to stubborn, resolute Aunt Emily, Naomi finds that one can correspond with others through silence as well as through speech. As a child, Naomi spends much of her life in non-communicative silence, only to help further the distance between herself and her mother. As Naomi grows into womanhood and beyond, she discovers that in speech lays understanding and, unfortunately, pain and sorrow. Joy Kogawa’s tale of Naomi Nakane shows how one young girl can live a tortured life and find peace living life in between silence speech.Naomi’s relationship with Obasan is an influential one, molded from love, respect, and understanding. Naomi describes Obasan’s way of communication best when she say declares, “The language of her grief is silence. She has learned it well, its idioms its nuances. Over the years the silence with her small body has grown large and powerful”(Obasan 17). Obasan’s silent stance provides a firm starting point for Naomi to return to when she needs to find her bearings. Obasan provides Naomi only positive reinforcement when it comes down to determining the right and wrongs of silence. Obasan used her silence to protect the children from the many faceted horror known as truth. The truth behind Naomi’s mother was requested to be kept from Naomi and her brother, but it was also potentially damaging to them as well. “The memories were drowned in a whirlpool of protective silence… For the sake of the children, calmness was maintained&...
