Humanities Homework Help

I’m working on a asian studies writing question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

Question 20: Situated on the crossroads of cultures, Kogawa in Obasan shows a mixed attitude toward both language and silence. Discuss how language can liberate and heal, distort and hurt while silence may smother and obliterate, minister, smooth, and communicate.

Question 21: Analyze this quote: “Sometimes when I stand in a prairie night the emptiness draws me irresistibly, like a dust speck into a vacuum cleaner, and I can imagine myself disappearing of into a space like a rocket with my questions trailing behind me” (222).

Question 22: What does Naomi learn from Aunt Emily’s activism? Discuss this episode in the novel: “What is done, Aunt Emily, is done, is it not? And no doubt it will all happen again, over and over with different faces and names, variations on the same theme.“Nothing but the lowest motives of greed, selfishness, and hatred have been brought forward to defend these disgraceful Orders,” the Globe and Mail noted. Greed, selfishness, and hatred remain as constant as the human condition, do they not? Or are you thinking that through lobbying and legislation, speechmaking and storytelling, we can extricate ourselves from our foolish ways? Is there evidence for optimism?” (238).

Question 23: Discuss this conversation between Stephen and Naomi when Stephen is back to Granton in 1954: “This spring, 1954, he is back again. When he stands around the yard, chewing on grass stems with his hands in the pockets of his old bomber jacket, he looks as if he never left Granton. It’s hard to imagine him onstage somewhere in Europe. If he has changed at all, perhaps he is less surly—less easily angered. But he still seems irritable and is almost completely non-communicative with Obasan. She mends and re-mends his old socks and shirts which he never wears and sets the table with food, which he often does not eat. Sometimes he leaps up in the middle of nothing at all and goes off, inexplicably, no one knows where. How, I wonder, does he get along with Aunt Emily?”What is she like, Stephen?” I ask. Since I have not seen her in twelve years I can hardly remember her at all.”She’s not like them,” Stephen says, jerking his thumb at Uncle and Obasan. He shows me a recent photograph of Aunt Emily standing behind a frail Grandpa Kato in a wheelchair. The picture was taken this year. They are strangers to me” (259).

Question 24: Meditate on this conversation and discuss your insights: “Mrs. Barker faces me with her whole body as if there are no independent joints. “A fisherman?” she asks.”It was a terrible business what we did to our Japanese,” Mr. Barker says.Ah, here we go again. “Our Indians”. “Our Japanese”. “A terrible business”. It’s like being offered a pair of crutches while I’m striding down the street. The comments are so incessant and always so well-intentioned. “How long have you been in this country? Do you like our country? You speak such good English. Do you run a cafe? My daughter has a darling Japanese friend. Have you ever been back to Japan?”Back?Does it so much matter that these questions are always asked? Particularly by strangers? These are icebreaker questions that create an awareness of ice” (271).

Question 25: At the heart of this novel are its historical narratives, but the larger resonance is human monstrosity whenever it occurs. Discuss the next-to-last word of Nakane: “This body of grief is not fit for human habitation. Let there be flesh. The song of mourning is not a life long song… the wild roses and the tiny wildflowers that grow along the trickling stream. The perfume in the air is sweet and faint. If I hold my head a certain way, I can smell them from where I am.”