How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
They all look rather humorless, but satisfied with the attention of the camera and its message for the day that all is well. That for ever and ever all is well. But it isn't, of course. Even my eleven-year-olds know that you can't "capture life's precious moments", as they say in the camera ads. (4.16)
We often see Naomi describing scenes from photographs in the novel. What role do photographs play in her memory of her childhood? Is it true that you can't capture life's precious moments in a picture?
Quote #2
Everything, I suppose, turns to dust eventually. A man's memories end up in some attic or in a Salvation Army bin. His name becomes a fleeting statistic and his face is lost in fading photographs, the clothing quaint, the anecdotes gone. (5.22)
This is a pretty sad interpretation of the phrase "from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust." It also strangely contrasts with the overall feeling of Obasan's house. If everything is eventually lost and turns to dust, how does Obasan have a house full of preserved knickknacks and memories?
Quote #3
She seems to have forgotten her reason for coming up here. I notice these days, from time to time, how the present disappears in her mind. The past hungers for her. Feasts on her. (5.34)
Why do you think Naomi says that the past hungers for Obasan? What would it mean for the past to eat her?
Quote #4
"We have to deal with all this while we remember it. If we don't we'll pass our anger down in our genes. It's the children who'll suffer," Aunt Emily said. (7.46)
Is Aunt Emily correct? Do Naomi and Stephen suffer as a result of their family's anger?
Quote #5
"Life is so short," I said, sighing, "the past so long. Shouldn't we turn the page and move on?" "The past is the future," Aunt Emily shot back. (7.105)
This one interaction epitomizes the difference between Aunt Emily and Naomi. Naomi is so done with the past, she doesn't even want to talk about it. But that's all Aunt Emily ever wants to talk about.
Quote #6
She places the picture in my hand. "Here is the best letter. This is the best time. These are the best memories." When would this be? I turn the photo around to see if there is any identification on the back, but there is none. (8.29)
When Naomi points out that the photo Obasan says is the best time has no date on it, she implies that it never happened. Like a Photoshop amalgamation, Naomi's happy childhood is a fiction created by her Aunts to keep her happy.
Quote #7
The woman in the picture is frail and shy and the child is equally shy, unable to lift her head. Only fragments relate me to them now, to this young woman, my mother, and me, her infant daughter. Fragments of fragments. Parts of a house. Segments of stories. (9.43)
Why do you think that Naomi feels so disconnected from her past? What has separated her from this time when she was happy with her mother? Is it possible for her to be connected to that time again?
Quote #8
Everything we have ever done we do again and again in my mind. I rehearse the past faithfully in preparation for her return. (12.11)
This is super cute. For little kids, the past slips away. We guess it's because they don't have a lot of it. But this attitude seems so strange in the context of the novel, where we know an adult Naomi who does everything she can to forget the past.
Quote #9
"Grinning and happy" and all smiles standing around a pile of beets? That is one telling. It's not how it was. (29.27)
By saying "that's one telling," Naomi lets us know that there's more than one version of the past. Her version just happens to disagree with the official version. But does that make it less true?
Quote #10
"In the heat of the August sun," Grandma writes, "however much the effort to forget, there is no forgetfulness. As in a dream, I can still see the maggots crawling in the sockets of my niece's eyes. Her strong intelligent young son helped me move a bonsai tree that very morning. There is no forgetfulness. (37.4)
Perhaps this scene speaks for itself. Sometimes it's better to forget than to remember.