How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The only way to be saved from harm was to become seductive. In this latest dream, three beautiful oriental women lay naked in the muddy road, flat on their backs, their faces turned to the sky… The first shots were aimed at the toes of the women, the second at their feet. (11.24)
This quote is one of only a couple of scenes in the novel that deal with sexual stuff, and like those other scenes this portrayal is negative. Just like Naomi's sexuality becomes negative after Old Man Gower molests her, these women try to use their sexuality to save themselves but it only gets them killed. Besides Naomi's own personal experience, this dream probably also refers to the large-scale war rapes that happened during World War II.
Quote #2
In my childhood dreams, the mountain yawns apart as the chasm spreads. My mother is on one side of the rift. I am on the other. We cannot reach each other. My legs are being sawn in half. (11.5)
We see this imagery over and over again. Naomi is separated from her mother and ripped in half. But what do you think about it? Is the rift between Naomi and her mother physical, emotional, or both? Why are her legs being sawn in half?
Quote #3
I am sometimes not certain whether it is a cluttered attic in which I sit, a waiting room, a tunnel, a train. There is no beginning and no end to the forest, or the dust storm, no edge from which to know where the clearing begins. (15.1)
The places that Naomi mentions here are interesting. They are all transitory places. You don't live in an attic: you store things there for later. Tunnels, waiting rooms, and trains are all places that you go through on the way to somewhere else. Why do you think Naomi dreams about these kinds of places? Why doesn't she dream of places like home?
Quote #4
I am in a hospital. Father is in a hospital. A chicken is in a hospital. Father is a chicken is a dream that I am in a hospital where my neck and chin are covered with a thick red stubble of hair and I am reading the careful table of contents of a book that has no contents. (22.1)
Psychedelic! Sometimes Naomi's dreams are full of really crazy pictures, like this one. But they always have some kind of meaning behind the obvious strangeness. For example, chickens have already been associated with death in the novel, so seeing Naomi's father as a chicken makes us think that he's going to die. And the book with no contents? That sounds like the history of what happened to Naomi's mom. And this thick red stubble hair? Okay, you got us. We have no idea what that's about.
Quote #5
The kitten cries day after day, not quite dead, unable to climb out and trapped in the outhouse. The maggots are crawling in its eyes and mouth. Its fur is covered in slime and feces. Chickens with their heads half off flap and swing upside down in midair. The baby in the dream has fried-egg eyes and his excrement is soft and yellow as corn mush. (22.89)
Yeah, gross, we know. We just wanted to point out that besides reinforcing imagery that has a ready appeared in the novel Naomi's dreams also foreshadow later moments. For example, the maggots in the kitten's eyes foreshadow the maggots that Grandma Kato sees in her niece's eyes. Not that you wanted to see that imagery twice.
Quote #6
She is a maypole woman to whose apron-string streamers I cling and around whose skirts I dance. (24.4)
Maypoles are bright, tall, colorful symbols of spring. Children hold streamers and dance around the pole in circles. Naomi dreams of her mother as a maypole, which is a bright and cheerful bit of dream imagery (for once!).
Quote #7
Facts about evacuees in Alberta? The fact is I never got used to it and I cannot, I cannot bear the memory. There are some nightmares from which there is no waking, only deeper and deeper sleep. (29.8)
Throughout the novel we are presented with two versions of reality that contradict one another. Here, we get "facts" about evacuees in Alberta versus Naomi's memories of how much they sucked. By saying that her life on the sugar beet farm was a nightmare, Naomi discounts the official "facts." The real facts here are her feelings about the time.
Quote #8
Those years on the Barker farm, my late childhood growing-up days, are sleepwalk years, a time of half dream. (30.1)
We guess we wouldn't want to remember toiling on a sugar beet farm either. Not only do Naomi's dreams foreshadow reality, but apparently Naomi's reality is almost like a dream. In other words, there isn't very much of a boundary between the dream world and the real world.
Quote #9
[...] Stephen leapt out of bed in the middle of the night yelling, "I've got to get out of here," and ran down the road away from the farm in the dark. [...] He said when he came back he'd had a nightmare. Something about a metallic insect the size of a tractor, webbing a grid of iron bars over him. (Later, he told me he had the same nightmare again, but escaped the web by turning the bars into a xylophone.) (33.64)
Someone besides Naomi has a dream, for once. So tell us, dreams sleuths, what's up with the iron bars and the xylophone? Could they have anything to do with Stephen's kick-butt music career?
Quote #10
Once I came across two ideographs for the word "love". The first contained the root words "heart" and "hand" and "action"—love as hands and heart in action together. The other ideograph, for "passionate love", was formed of "heart", "to tell", and "a long thread". The dance ceremony of the dead was a slow courtly telling, the heart declaring a long thread knotted to Obasan's twine, knotted to Aunt Emily's package. (35.2)
Japanese lesson time. There are two words in Japanese that can translate into love: ai and koi. Ai is the first love that Naomi is talking about, and koi is the second. Ai could be translated as "real love." We are not talking about summer hookups: this is love that's in it for the long haul and through thick and thin. Koi, on the other hand is "passionate love." It's closer to the Western idea of love, with all the holding hands and kissing and Valentine's Day chocolates. Why do you think that Obasan is dancing koi love in Naomi's dream? Which of the two Japanese words for love do you think describes Obasan's everyday attitude towards Naomi?