Prejudice in "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "Obasan"

Paper Summary:

This is an insightful essay dealing with the impact of World War Two on two communities, which contain Japanese Canadians and Americans. The two novels, "Obasan" and "Snow Falling on Cedars", show the prejudice and racism of the Second World War, as well as the paranoia of the white community. The essay describes the impacts of the war, and also contrasts how memories and emotions of war can be suppressed by silence or resurfaced in everyday life. This essay shows both effects using the two novels to show the various outcomes.

From the Paper:

"Many memorable events in people's lives have the power to affect their memories, emotions, and relationships later in life. These events may be positive or negative and are dealt with in various ways, such as silence, anger, denial or confrontation. In "Snow Falling on Cedars", by David Guterson, and "Obasan", by Joy Kogawa, the event of World War II creates lasting impressions on all the characters, which are evident even many years later in both plots. In "Snow Falling on Cedars", a man named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged for the murder of a well-liked fisherman. While he and others are on the stand, memories of World War II surface, revealing a complex plot containing separated lovers, a battle for land, and the island's always present, racism. In Kogawa's novel, a schoolteacher named Naomi Nakane visits her Aunt Obasan because her uncle has passed away. During the visit she remembers her family's separation and relocation during World War II through the reading of diaries, and eventually learns the details of her mother's demise after thirty years. Both novels deal with the prejudice toward the Japanese in North America during the Second World War, as well as show the lasting effects that war leaves on its survivor."

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