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Chapter 37
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Obasan, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race, Identity, and Citizenship
History and Memory
Speech vs. Silence
Selflessness and Decorum
Summary
Analysis
Naomi calls out to Mother, trying to decipher the “wordless word” of this voiceless woman. Mother’s name was eventually found on a plaque of the dead, so all that is left of her is the silence and lies she left behind. Naomi knows that Mother hoped to protect her children with these lies, but just because Mother does not share her pain doesn’t mean Naomi doesn’t share in that pain as well.
Mother’s silence has created a rift between her and Naomi, but it does not make connection between them impossible. In fact, Naomi believes that Mother’s silence is decipherable as a language in and of itself, which demonstrates a more nuanced understanding of silence than Emily shows, or than Naomi herself showed when she was younger.
Themes
Naomi thinks of the old photograph in which she clings to Mother. She thinks of her mother as a tree from which Naomi herself branches. She thinks that while a child can’t feel someone’s presence without feeling their touch, Naomi is no longer a child. She “can know [Mother’s] presence even though [she is] not here,” and can still send and receive love from Mother.
Naomi’s family members hid the truth about Mother “for the sake of the children,” but Naomi is not a child. Though her denial of the past kept her trapped within it, now that she is choosing to confront that past, she begins to mature past the traumatized little girl she once was. In that journey, Naomi has come to redefine silence itself as an untraditional—perhaps even subversive—mode of communication between herself and her mother.
Themes
