ENGL 1080
Memorial University of Newfoundland
September 28, 2006
An Image of Obasan
Joy Kagawa, in her short story �Obasan,� surrounds Aunt Obasan with powerful imagery throughout the text. The images of water, of the home, of the spider and its web, and of dust are layered in a way that gives great and grave significance to Obasan�s life, and life lived. The main image themes hold an incredible power in that they are strong archetypes iterated near infinitely through culture and literature. Surrounding Obasan, the imagery compels her importance upon the reader, and her story is soaked in urgency. The passage of time brings many things when it reaches today�s shores�death and renewal included.
Water is more than the source of all life on this planet. It has an ethereal quality in that it fills space in all forms�liquid, solid, gas�giving it deep, spiritual connotation. That every river endlessly returns to the sea likens water to the soul�s perpetual journey back to its source. In Uncle�s case, his source is the eternal ocean, or the �underground sea� (3) he has returned to. While Uncle�s life is extensively connected with water, being �an infant of the waves, rocked to sleep by the lap lap� (3)�like Moses (3), it is noticed that Obasan appears water deficient. Her eyes are �sticky with a gum-like mucus� (3), and her mouth is �filled with a gummy saliva� (3). Uncle has died, leaving Obasan alone in her house of dust, dry, and cobwebs. The ocean has broken and receded, leaving her lonely on dry prairie. With water the sounds of Earth�s creatures crash throughout the world; without water, and Uncle, Obasan is left in silence.
Silence permeates through her house like exhaled air. Grief embodies her home. These two forces have �claimed her kingdom fully� (4) in as much as they have claimed her, and �[Obasan�s] house is now her blood and bones� (5). Just as life�s memories and experiences remain within a person forever, so Obasan�s endless items rest �in the corners of the house like parts of her body, hair cells, skin tissue, food particles, tiny specks of memory� (5). Like the ageing Obasan, her house seems to have �shrunk over the years and is even more cluttered� (3). Inside Obasan�s home, her daughters� toys haunt the shelves and cupboards. The dead sparrow in the attic echoes Uncle�s death and life, showing how difficult life lived in her house could be, and telling more of what has died in Obasan to have fledged her daughters� long-ago exodus.
Her daughters have escaped this home of grief�this extension of their mother which surrounds their childhood with silent suffering. They no longer need be subjected to the �old spider webs [that] hang like blood clots� (5) in Obasan�s attic. Like shadowed memories, the sticky strands strung silently from the attic beams offend when come upon, as if from nowhere. Obasan�s past is knitted with spiders� work, each web entangled in a different memory of grief from long ago, each obtrusive encounter like a trap in time. All of her keepsakes rest among these webs. Uncle�s father�s boat building tools in a cardboard box�once treasured they now bring to mind only the pain of injustice. The government taking its love away from the Japanese and the country doing nothing�both helping to weave a dense, viscid net to trap Obasan in the grief of utter alienation. Like dust swept to a fan, her family is blown out of place and left to quietly resettle.
The imagery within Obasan�s story is gifted to all of humanity. That it encircles Obasan so intimately gives truth to the idea that these natural elements are inescapable. Water will nourish life, honouring time�s tides. Life will surround the living like water. Spiders will forever weave their visceral webs. Dust will blow in under the doors from outside, or come in on clothes and boots. Spring brings a violent cycle.
[The] sky ... is painfully blue. The trees are shooting out their
leaves in the fierce wind, the new branches elastic as whips. (7)
What is outside will always be in the process of coming in and the inside slowly turning out. The breath regulates this exchange in the body�incessantly pulling and pushing air through the lungs and blood. Fresh air has entered Obasan and removed its mud-caked boots inside. Obasan will find nothing worth giving from the attic that is not begrimed in her past�s grievances. Acknowledging and returning her niece�s care, she cleans the mud from the boots by the door. The niece breathes life back into the muted house, letting the �antique pollen� (6) from the attic fall to the floor and grow as Obasan�s African violets�untainted with the sorrows of the past and nurtured as all immigrants should be when rooting in new soil.
PEACE - Tristan
before || after
