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Obasan Character Analysis

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In the beginning of the documentary, Jari Osbourne indicates that as a child she was dis-appointed of her father because he did not share stories with her. The only belief she had of her father was that he was a soldier, went to oversees and caught malaria, nothing heroic at all. When she was old enough she learned that her father was discriminated against due to his race and that joining the Canadian troops was a challenge for her father and his peers. Throughout this docu-mentary, the director asks her father Alex Louie why he did not share stories with her as a child and why he felt the need to repress these memories. He states that he felt embarrassed and he did not want to burden his young daughter by telling her sad stories. In the novel Obasan by Joy Kogawa, Obasan is a major character in the novel that is the…show more content…
Both characters care about their families and have gone through the same obstacles in the past, yet portray it in very different ways. In the documentary, Alex Louie and his peers interviewed are vocal about the obstacles they were put through, however they clearly state that they would not bring up the past if they were having a random conversation in a coffee shop on a normal day. This speaks volumes in terms of educating younger generations about the past. Aunt Emily in Obasan ensures that Naomi knows about the past however Obasan chooses to let it go and leave the past with the past. The deep question would be which character is doing the right thing, if the younger generations do not know about the past; they may lose some form of culture and not fully understand what their ancestors fought for. However, if they know too much about the past and constantly are reminded of it, then it may drive them away from their culture and traditions. The balance and limits are major problems in regards to the amount of information given to younger
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