Welcome, my friends, to our Brooklyn College Core 10.01 class blog. Hopefully, this will be a place where we can all learn from one another. Be honest, be inquisitive, be challenging.
On page 73 of No-No Boy, John Okada writes, So they sat silently through the next drink, one already dead but still alive and contemplating fifty or sixty years more of dead aliveness, and the other, living and dying slowly. They were two extremes, the Japanese who was more American than most Americans because he had crept to the brink of death for America, and the other who was neither Japanese nor American because he had failed to recognize the gift of his birthright when recognition meant everything. This passage illustrates Ichiro and Kenji’s relationship to one another. They are both Japanese-American, yet they are polar opposites. Ichiro refused to serve in the war unless his request was met, and now, ashamed, he is disgraced by many of his peers solely because of the Japanese internment situation during the war. On the other hand, Kenji can be proud of his accomplishments. As a soldier wounded in battle, he returns to Seattle a hero. Since he acted patriotically in the war, he is considered American, according to Ichiro and most everyone else. In a sense, Okada sets up a binary between Ichiro and Kenji. Ichiro is ashamed while Kenji can be proud that he served in the military for America. Kenji’s experiences have made him appear “old” while Ichiro is still young and attractive, despite the fact that they are both 25. Ichiro was raised by traditional Japanese parents while Kenji’s family has assimilated into American culture. Among peers from their enclave, Kenji is regarded as American while Ichiro is a “Jap”. Ichiro feels like an empty shell that will endure for a long time but has nothing to look forward to in life. Kenji is full of verve and enthusiasm yet his time left on earth is limited. Ichiro’s friendship with Kenji is strong and lasting, like the slash which connects two terms in a binary. The men support, strengthen and learn from each other. Kenji provides Ichiro with a different perspective concerning life when Ichiro is vulnerable and needs it the most. The most important binary is the American/Japanese one. Ichiro does not know what he is because of his negative experiences. He concludes that since it is not socially acceptable to be equally Japanese and American then he can be neither. Okada breaks the binary because Ichiro cannot simply be Japanese or American. He is a combination of both, and his identity vacillates between these two ethnicities throughout the story. Ichiro is described as “contemplating” in the quote. This adjective is extremely accurate in depicting the protagonist because he spends the entire course of the book analyzing his identity. Ichiro does not choose being Japanese over American when he does not fight in the war. It is more complicated than that. It is evident that Ichiro believes he made a mistake in not fighting in the war. The opportunity to join the American military is the “gift” that he is offered because he is an American citizen. However, he rejects this gift because of his strong ties to his parents and therefore, he has some invisible connection to Japan, despite the fact that he has never been there before. Okada focuses on the significance of identity in his work. Ichiro is constantly alternating his views on what it is to be Japanese-American. While he and his family were in the internment camps, Ichiro feels rejected because he is not American enough to not pose a threat during the war. Although he is an American citizen, Ichiro is discriminated against because of his Japanese ancestry. At this point he does not feel American because he is not allowed the same freedoms as other non-Japanese citizens. In a turn of events, Ichiro is drafted for the war because he is still recognized as American on some level. He does not refuse to participate outright, and says he will join the military if his father is allowed to switch to a different internment camp in order to be reunited with his family. The judge does not grant this request, so Ichiro is sent to prison for two years. When he is released, we find that he regrets not joining the military. To make matters worse, extremists are prejudiced against no-no boys. I sympathized with Ichiro from the beginning of the story; he was caught between a rock and a hard place (otherwise known as a binary) and made a decision of which he should not be ashamed.
It is a novel that leads us into the lives of Asian Americans during World War II. The discrimination, hatred, and prejudice displayed against these people were a disgusting part of American history that still goes on this present day. No-No Boy by John Okada is an amazing story that allows us to sympathize with the main character and despise those that think they are better because they can identify themselves with a specific race. It allows us to see how certain relationships are formed and why some of them still exist despite the many reasons why they shouldn’t, but most importantly it allows us to have a better understanding of what it feels like to have this internal conflict between what we were raised to be and what we have grown to be. Okada introduced to us the main character in a unique way, but he introduced the parents in an even more bizarre way, already hinting at the fact that these people are far from normal. When Ma came into the story I was automatically drawn to the way he represented her, and this was the real beginning of the novel for me. On page eleven, Okada places one paragraph towards the top of the page that is different from the rest. At first glance it looks like a normal, well written, cohesive paragraph, but when you read it and analyze it, many things catch you by surprise. One thing about this paragraph is that it isn’t quite a paragraph; rather it is one extremely long sentence, with no punctuation marks. It is this way to show that the mother isn’t quite that calm and loving with her mannerisms, rather she is an abrupt, straight to the point woman who doesn’t care to show any emotions towards her children or husband. This section sets up the character of the mother, telling the readers that what she says is direct and it gets the job done without beating around the bush. At this first meeting Ma doesn’t even act as if it has been two years since she last saw her son, and the author wants to make it apparent to us, that through the rest of the novel she wont be acting like the compassionate mother, rather she will be taking the role of the distant father. When you take a closer look at what is being said in this passage, you can see what the conflict will be for the rest of the novel. Ichiro doesn’t know how to identify himself, whether he is American or Japanese, because depending on what he decides he is, it will make him more or less privileged. This binary that has been formed within the novel shows signs of Post-Colonial theory which says that the word before the slash is more privileged than the word after the slash, basically pointing to the fact that with the American/Japanese binary, being an American means you are more privileged than a person who is Japanese. At this point in the novel we are starting to see that Ma identifies herself as Japanese, and it is made apparent that she is proud of the choice her son made, because he hasn’t take that identity away from her. By him choosing not to fight in the war it made him more Japanese, which in turn made her Japanese because she is his mother. It was her who made him who he was today, and it was through the ideals and morals that she taught him that he made his decision, so it was she who made him who he was today, despite anything that may have influenced him from the outside. The credit relies solely on how she raised him and how she instilled her values into him. The passage is an interesting one because you can see that Ma is the one who calls the shots in the household, and it is she who takes credit for her son being a true Japanese man. Although it is at the beginning of the novel, it is a great precursor to who the mother’s character is throughout the rest of the story, and it summarizes the personality given to her by Okada. Not only is she strong, but she is also conceited and pompous about what she is saying because “she made him what he was and that the thing in him which made him say no…was the growth of a seed planted by the mother tree”, and by no one else. She is proud of her son for standing up for what she believed in, but as we see later on, he struggles with the fact that it might not have been what he believed in. There is no way that one can truly understand what a person is going through unless they are in the same situation and in the same circumstances, but this novel tries to create a way in which we can get a sense of how Ichiro feels. It is a well written, and well-structured novel that deserves much admiration and credit, much more than it has received. John Okada wrote an exceptional book that caught my attention several times throughout the book, not just necessarily in this instance.
“They shook hands and Ichiro took the bus back to the hotel. He had every reason to be enormously elated and, yet, his thoughts were solemn to the point of brooding. Then, as he thought about Mr. Carrick and their conversation time and time again, its meaning for him evolved into a singularly comforting thought. There was someone who cared. Surely there were others too who understood the suffering of the small and the weak and, yes, even the seemingly treasonous, and offered a way back into the great compassionate stream of life that is America.” (Okada, 153)
In No-No Boy by John Okada, Ichiro had accompanied Kenji to Portland and also hoped that he could find a job and remain there in a way to escape his home and the problems that he felt were only at home. Ichiro goes to Mr. Carrick to interview for a position as an engineer. Mr. Carrick offers him a job with a very good salary in Portland. This is the break that Ichiro had been looking for. Mr. Carrick is an all-American type of guy who knows of Ichiro’s past and still accepted him. I think that this is a major turning point in the book. This passage is when it dawned on Ichiro that there were people (or at least one that he knew of) out in the world that did care about others. Not all people were hateful individuals. He looked at Mr. Carrick as someone with high importance. He was the epitome of “American ness”, he was white, he owned his own business, he had that all-American air about him and yet he accepted Ichiro. Ichiro started to figure out that not all people thought the same as the racist people he had encountered did. “There was someone who cared”, there was someone who was not Japanese giving agreement to his decision. I think that a big reason that he felt joyous over this was that Mr. Carrick was “white, American”, that was a big victorious feeling for Ichiro. D’Agostino 2 The exact “type” of people that took his people and isolated them in camps, and the same “type” of people that put him in prison, it seems like a big hurdle had been jumped. I think that it was very significant for Okada to introduce Mr. Carrick. Ichiro was now able to walk away with the possibility that Mr. Carrick was the leader and eventually there would be other followers to this way of thinking. This paragraph starts to give you, as a reader, the hope that Ichiro’s identity will now start to evolve and become its own. Not the person that his mother wants him to be or even the person that America wants him to be but the Ichiro that he wants to be. It was a small drop of hope in a large bucket. Now he was able to go back home and fight. The part of this passage that I didn’t really like was when he says, “…the suffering of the small and the weak and, yes, even the seemingly treasonous, and offered a way back into the great compassionate stream of life that is America.” Ichiro refers to himself as “small and the weak”; I don’t feel that he is necessarily small and weak because in a way he stood up for what he wanted. Whether it is that he didn’t choose a side. He stood up for the fact that he remained neutral. I’m sure that plenty of others that went to war didn’t want to go. They just went to war not to be made an example of, not to fall prey to the big bully that America was. The part where he calls himself “treasonous” gives you a sense that he still gives himself fault and feels wrong about what he did. So, you know that it is still a long road ahead for him to come to terms with the person that he wants to be. He wanted a “way back into the great compassionate stream of life that is America.” I think that he was seeking approval from the wrong people. The people that showed him anger and racism D’Agostino 3 were very stupid people. These were ignorant people such as Taro and his friends, and the black men that insulted him when he was first getting home from prison. These people have no room to talk. He was basing his acceptance and trying to create himself on the few people he encountered. In any case, Okada made a statement in this passage, he showed us some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. It seems that this was just the beginning of Ichiro’s positive journey into himself.
As a novel about a character described as an outsider, it is of no surprise that No-No Boy is written in third person. Having a sense of separation in the writing itself sets the outline for the character. The plot begins by describing Ichiro’s situation. He is a “No-No Boy” – one who has refused to become American in the wake of a war with Japan, who has just returned from prison, and is now attempting the return to his old life. Upon his return Ichiro’s mother insists on his visiting old family friends, the first of which are the Kamusakas. After hearing of their son’s death yet just prior to leaving Ichiro, “Impulsively… took the little man’s hand in his own and held it briefly. Then he hurried out of the house which could never be his own.” (Osaka 31). This seemingly superfluous paragraph represents more than just a heartfelt goodbye that Ichiro was offering Mr. Kumasaka. It symbolizes Ichiro’s first meeting with the numerous people that have suffered tragedy as a result of Americanizing themselves. This meeting triggers feelings within Ichiro in which he now believes that he had made the wrong decision by remaining “Japanese,” and dodging the war. The specific choice of language in which “He took the little man’s hand in his own and held it briefly” represent, Ichiro’s realizing what his own really was, or rather should have been. By taking the hand he is associating himself with the man who represents what he wants to be. Yet he only holds it briefly as he realizes that he is still held back by the decisions that he has made. His “impulsive” taking of the hand further shows that in his subconscious this was his true feeling toward the issue. Having thought into the situation, however, he may not have grabbed at the hand. The paragraph ends in similar fashion. By saying that, “he hurried out of the house which could never be his own.” The novel is not informing us that Ichiro is destined to live a poor life, but rather in his own mind he is destined to live a life that is different than that of the Kumasaka’s. The house symbolizes more than a house in the physical sense; it is the embodiment of everything expressed by the person whose house it is. This sets up an internal binary within Ichiro’s mind. He clearly creates a separation not only between himself and Americans but even with those Japanese that have assimilated. Following the deconstructionalist view, Ichiro seems to classify himself in a group that he himself views as the lower half of the binary. And even goes so far as to say he cannot change this. He confirms this as he later meets with his friend, also injured in battle, with possibly two years to live. Regardless of the friend’s grim situation Ichiro is willing to change places, as he can no longer live up to his past and is forever condemned to live in his status. While Ichiro is now removed from jail, he is now faced with deeper problem of life. He is trapped in the lie that he feels his mother’s hatred has forced upon him, and he is subject to this. His numerous encounters, elaborate this point as he clearly shows his disdain for the life he was born into and has led himself to.
“Dead, he thought to himself, all dead. For me you have been dead a long time, as long as I remember. You, who gave life to me and to Taro and tried to make us conform to a mold which never existed for us because we never knew of it, were never alive to us in the way that other sons and daughters know and feel and see their parents. But you made so mistakes. It was a mistake to have left Japan and to come to America and to have two sons and it was a mistake to think that you could keep us completely Japanese in a country such as America. With me you almost succeeded. You would have been happy and so might I have known a sense of completeness. But the mistakes you made were numerous enough and big enough, so they in turn, made inevitable my mistake. I have had much time to feel sorry for myself. Suddenly I feel sorry for you. Not sorry that you are dead but sorry for the happiness you have not known (p186).” The event of this passage-the death of the main character‘s mother, is part of Okada’s novel, No No Boy. It takes place when Ichiro comes from Kenji’s house. Kenji is an Japanese-American boy who joined the Army. He lost his leg in the War and dies because the leg's infection advanced very fast. When Ichiro learns about his death, he gets sad and keeps thinking that his friend had the right to live because he deserved to; he was American and served it with wisdom, but Ichiro did not. When Ichiro, then, enters inside the house he gets a second shock, the death of his mother. But immidiately Ichiro feels that what he sees is not something new. To him his mother has long time that doesn't exist.
What Okada tries to address through this passage is an anger that the main character, Ichiro delivers to his mother though she has no life and no voice. His anger seems to be as a consequence of the World War II tracks left in the Japanese- American families lives, but in fact it is mostly because of the conflict that the assimilation process brings to different generation.
A mother complete Japanes, who rejects America in her identity, who refuses the reality, and never tries to assimilate has created around herself a fiction world that is never understood by her sons. She feels failed and kills herself. On the other hand, her son feels hatred for her because she has won to leave her tracks in his life, which doesn't have a sense since he refuses to join the American Army and has no identity. Our character, Ichiro feels no one, no boy. In fact he realizes that he belongs more to American world than Japanese one, because America symbolizes the present. It is clear the binary Odaka includes his character .
Ichiro’s mother is dead; however, her death doesn’t cause any mercy to him, “you have been dead a long time,” he says in his inside monologue, whereas his friend’s death, Kenji‘s lets him very sad. The word dead is used in a figurative manner and means no movement, no change, no feelings, no reflection, and no assimilation.These are the reasons why Ichiro has considered his mother dead. She didn’t have the ability to create a mother relationship with her sons. She didn’t care what her sons were like and never tried to understand them. She did not change herself and did not wanted her children to change too, trying to put her children in a world that was abstract, has no meaning, and could not function in the reality. That means to be dead. A dead person does not have feelings and doesn’t react toward what is going around, and so his mother didn’t try to understand her children, their challenged nature, and their assimilation, nor did she tried to understand the real situation of Japan.
The happiness that people try to find in America means to be American, but she doesn’t feel it. Assimilation is natural and means acceptance. Ichiro wants to be American because he wants to be accepted. However his mother kills herself to reject American influence from a world that she realizes that there was no more way to live as Japanese. Therefore, she is not an alive mother, therefore to Ichiro. A mother loves and care of her children and understands them like no one else could do and accepts their real identity. Their happiness should be part of her happiness. Though Ichiro feels anger for her and “not sorry” that she’s dead, he is not able to hate. He feels bad for “the happiness you have not known,” and would like to imagine how that happiness would exist.
In fact, living as Japanese, as complete Japanese, would be the best way to enjoy the life according to Ichiro's mother. She wants her sons to take advantage of America for a good education that they would use in Japan. But Japan was physically and mentally far away from Ichiro and his brother. This was something that she never understood, but instead tried to condition and narrow their life; that was really wrong but not weird. Okada delievers the idead that when people base their concepts on different binaries-mother to Japanese/ American and American(Present)/Japanese (far) then, they create the conflict between them.In his novel, Okada sets a binary world to his characters. The mother is a binary woman- she rejects everything that is not “Japanese,” but she is left alone. Ichiro hates because he is not able to love. He judges his mother because he is not able to forgive her. Ichiro admits the impact of his mother in his life. He relates his refusing to join the American Army to his mother impact.
Indeed, we see a greater impact for the way he thinks and acts. Ichiro feels and acts as she does according to binary conceps, but with a huge difference; he is not part of the binary his mother belongs, but part of the present versus abstract and America versus Orientals. He doesn’t forgive her for her mistakes as well as she didn’t forgive her sons for being and thinking as Americas and thus kills herself. He rejects like she does and is a binary person. He hates his mother because he is not able to love her, and he judges her mother because he is not able to forgive her. It is her fault that he feels incomplete.
From the moment his mother dies there will be no more obstacle to enjoy life the way he wishes. We are left with the idea that assimilation is not a choice but a necessity, it is the identity of those who really love, tolerate, and want to live not as stranger but as familiar.
5 comments:
CC 10.01
Raquel Arnao
Close reading for No-No Boy
On page 73 of No-No Boy, John Okada writes,
So they sat silently through the next drink, one already dead but still alive and contemplating fifty or sixty years more of dead aliveness, and the other, living and dying slowly. They were two extremes, the Japanese who was more American than most Americans because he had crept to the brink of death for America, and the other who was neither Japanese nor American because he had failed to recognize the gift of his birthright when recognition meant everything.
This passage illustrates Ichiro and Kenji’s relationship to one another. They are both Japanese-American, yet they are polar opposites. Ichiro refused to serve in the war unless his request was met, and now, ashamed, he is disgraced by many of his peers solely because of the Japanese internment situation during the war. On the other hand, Kenji can be proud of his accomplishments. As a soldier wounded in battle, he returns to Seattle a hero. Since he acted patriotically in the war, he is considered American, according to Ichiro and most everyone else.
In a sense, Okada sets up a binary between Ichiro and Kenji. Ichiro is ashamed while Kenji can be proud that he served in the military for America. Kenji’s experiences have made him appear “old” while Ichiro is still young and attractive, despite the fact that they are both 25. Ichiro was raised by traditional Japanese parents while Kenji’s family has assimilated into American culture. Among peers from their enclave, Kenji is regarded as American while Ichiro is a “Jap”. Ichiro feels like an empty shell that will endure for a long time but has nothing to look forward to in life. Kenji is full of verve and enthusiasm yet his time left on earth is limited.
Ichiro’s friendship with Kenji is strong and lasting, like the slash which connects two terms in a binary. The men support, strengthen and learn from each other. Kenji provides Ichiro with a different perspective concerning life when Ichiro is vulnerable and needs it the most.
The most important binary is the American/Japanese one. Ichiro does not know what he is because of his negative experiences. He concludes that since it is not socially acceptable to be equally Japanese and American then he can be neither. Okada breaks the binary because Ichiro cannot simply be Japanese or American. He is a combination of both, and his identity vacillates between these two ethnicities throughout the story. Ichiro is described as “contemplating” in the quote. This adjective is extremely accurate in depicting the protagonist because he spends the entire course of the book analyzing his identity. Ichiro does not choose being Japanese over American when he does not fight in the war. It is more complicated than that. It is evident that Ichiro believes he made a mistake in not fighting in the war. The opportunity to join the American military is the “gift” that he is offered because he is an American citizen. However, he rejects this gift because of his strong ties to his parents and therefore, he has some invisible connection to Japan, despite the fact that he has never been there before.
Okada focuses on the significance of identity in his work. Ichiro is constantly alternating his views on what it is to be Japanese-American. While he and his family were in the internment camps, Ichiro feels rejected because he is not American enough to not pose a threat during the war. Although he is an American citizen, Ichiro is discriminated against because of his Japanese ancestry. At this point he does not feel American because he is not allowed the same freedoms as other non-Japanese citizens. In a turn of events, Ichiro is drafted for the war because he is still recognized as American on some level. He does not refuse to participate outright, and says he will join the military if his father is allowed to switch to a different internment camp in order to be reunited with his family. The judge does not grant this request, so Ichiro is sent to prison for two years. When he is released, we find that he regrets not joining the military. To make matters worse, extremists are prejudiced against no-no boys.
I sympathized with Ichiro from the beginning of the story; he was caught between a rock and a hard place (otherwise known as a binary) and made a decision of which he should not be ashamed.
It is a novel that leads us into the lives of Asian Americans during World War II. The discrimination, hatred, and prejudice displayed against these people were a disgusting part of American history that still goes on this present day. No-No Boy by John Okada is an amazing story that allows us to sympathize with the main character and despise those that think they are better because they can identify themselves with a specific race. It allows us to see how certain relationships are formed and why some of them still exist despite the many reasons why they shouldn’t, but most importantly it allows us to have a better understanding of what it feels like to have this internal conflict between what we were raised to be and what we have grown to be.
Okada introduced to us the main character in a unique way, but he introduced the parents in an even more bizarre way, already hinting at the fact that these people are far from normal. When Ma came into the story I was automatically drawn to the way he represented her, and this was the real beginning of the novel for me. On page eleven, Okada places one paragraph towards the top of the page that is different from the rest. At first glance it looks like a normal, well written, cohesive paragraph, but when you read it and analyze it, many things catch you by surprise. One thing about this paragraph is that it isn’t quite a paragraph; rather it is one extremely long sentence, with no punctuation marks. It is this way to show that the mother isn’t quite that calm and loving with her mannerisms, rather she is an abrupt, straight to the point woman who doesn’t care to show any emotions towards her children or husband. This section sets up the character of the mother, telling the readers that what she says is direct and it gets the job done without beating around the bush. At this first meeting Ma doesn’t even act as if it has been two years since she last saw her son, and the author wants to make it apparent to us, that through the rest of the novel she wont be acting like the compassionate mother, rather she will be taking the role of the distant father.
When you take a closer look at what is being said in this passage, you can see what the conflict will be for the rest of the novel. Ichiro doesn’t know how to identify himself, whether he is American or Japanese, because depending on what he decides he is, it will make him more or less privileged. This binary that has been formed within the novel shows signs of Post-Colonial theory which says that the word before the slash is more privileged than the word after the slash, basically pointing to the fact that with the American/Japanese binary, being an American means you are more privileged than a person who is Japanese. At this point in the novel we are starting to see that Ma identifies herself as Japanese, and it is made apparent that she is proud of the choice her son made, because he hasn’t take that identity away from her. By him choosing not to fight in the war it made him more Japanese, which in turn made her Japanese because she is his mother. It was her who made him who he was today, and it was through the ideals and morals that she taught him that he made his decision, so it was she who made him who he was today, despite anything that may have influenced him from the outside. The credit relies solely on how she raised him and how she instilled her values into him.
The passage is an interesting one because you can see that Ma is the one who calls the shots in the household, and it is she who takes credit for her son being a true Japanese man. Although it is at the beginning of the novel, it is a great precursor to who the mother’s character is throughout the rest of the story, and it summarizes the personality given to her by Okada. Not only is she strong, but she is also conceited and pompous about what she is saying because “she made him what he was and that the thing in him which made him say no…was the growth of a seed planted by the mother tree”, and by no one else. She is proud of her son for standing up for what she believed in, but as we see later on, he struggles with the fact that it might not have been what he believed in.
There is no way that one can truly understand what a person is going through unless they are in the same situation and in the same circumstances, but this novel tries to create a way in which we can get a sense of how Ichiro feels. It is a well written, and well-structured novel that deserves much admiration and credit, much more than it has received. John Okada wrote an exceptional book that caught my attention several times throughout the book, not just necessarily in this instance.
“They shook hands and Ichiro took the bus back to the hotel. He had every reason to be enormously elated and, yet, his thoughts were solemn to the point of brooding. Then, as he thought about Mr. Carrick and their conversation time and time again, its meaning for him evolved into a singularly comforting thought. There was someone who cared. Surely there were others too who understood the suffering of the small and the weak and, yes, even the seemingly treasonous, and offered a way back into the great compassionate stream of life that is America.” (Okada, 153)
In No-No Boy by John Okada, Ichiro had accompanied Kenji to Portland and also hoped that he could find a job and remain there in a way to escape his home and the problems that he felt were only at home. Ichiro goes to Mr. Carrick to interview for a position as an engineer. Mr. Carrick offers him a job with a very good salary in Portland. This is the break that Ichiro had been looking for. Mr. Carrick is an all-American type of guy who knows of Ichiro’s past and still accepted him. I think that this is a major turning point in the book.
This passage is when it dawned on Ichiro that there were people (or at least one that he knew of) out in the world that did care about others. Not all people were hateful individuals. He looked at Mr. Carrick as someone with high importance. He was the epitome of “American ness”, he was white, he owned his own business, he had that all-American air about him and yet he accepted Ichiro. Ichiro started to figure out that not all people thought the same as the racist people he had encountered did.
“There was someone who cared”, there was someone who was not Japanese giving agreement to his decision. I think that a big reason that he felt joyous over this was that Mr. Carrick was “white, American”, that was a big victorious feeling for Ichiro.
D’Agostino 2
The exact “type” of people that took his people and isolated them in camps, and the same “type” of people that put him in prison, it seems like a big hurdle had been jumped. I think that it was very significant for Okada to introduce Mr. Carrick.
Ichiro was now able to walk away with the possibility that Mr. Carrick was the leader and eventually there would be other followers to this way of thinking. This paragraph starts to give you, as a reader, the hope that Ichiro’s identity will now start to evolve and become its own. Not the person that his mother wants him to be or even the person that America wants him to be but the Ichiro that he wants to be. It was a small drop of hope in a large bucket. Now he was able to go back home and fight.
The part of this passage that I didn’t really like was when he says, “…the suffering of the small and the weak and, yes, even the seemingly treasonous, and offered a way back into the great compassionate stream of life that is America.” Ichiro refers to himself as “small and the weak”; I don’t feel that he is necessarily small and weak because in a way he stood up for what he wanted. Whether it is that he didn’t choose a side. He stood up for the fact that he remained neutral. I’m sure that plenty of others that went to war didn’t want to go. They just went to war not to be made an example of, not to fall prey to the big bully that America was.
The part where he calls himself “treasonous” gives you a sense that he still gives himself fault and feels wrong about what he did. So, you know that it is still a long road ahead for him to come to terms with the person that he wants to be. He wanted a “way back into the great compassionate stream of life that is America.” I think that he was seeking approval from the wrong people. The people that showed him anger and racism
D’Agostino 3
were very stupid people. These were ignorant people such as Taro and his friends, and the black men that insulted him when he was first getting home from prison. These people have no room to talk. He was basing his acceptance and trying to create himself on the few people he encountered.
In any case, Okada made a statement in this passage, he showed us some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. It seems that this was just the beginning of Ichiro’s positive journey into himself.
Marc Gamss
CC 10.01
No-No Boy Close Reading
As a novel about a character described as an outsider, it is of no surprise that No-No Boy is written in third person. Having a sense of separation in the writing itself sets the outline for the character. The plot begins by describing Ichiro’s situation. He is a “No-No Boy” – one who has refused to become American in the wake of a war with Japan, who has just returned from prison, and is now attempting the return to his old life.
Upon his return Ichiro’s mother insists on his visiting old family friends, the first of which are the Kamusakas. After hearing of their son’s death yet just prior to leaving Ichiro, “Impulsively… took the little man’s hand in his own and held it briefly. Then he hurried out of the house which could never be his own.” (Osaka 31). This seemingly superfluous paragraph represents more than just a heartfelt goodbye that Ichiro was offering Mr. Kumasaka. It symbolizes Ichiro’s first meeting with the numerous people that have suffered tragedy as a result of Americanizing themselves.
This meeting triggers feelings within Ichiro in which he now believes that he had made the wrong decision by remaining “Japanese,” and dodging the war. The specific choice of language in which “He took the little man’s hand in his own and held it briefly” represent, Ichiro’s realizing what his own really was, or rather should have been. By taking the hand he is associating himself with the man who represents what he wants to be. Yet he only holds it briefly as he realizes that he is still held back by the decisions that he has made. His “impulsive” taking of the hand further shows that in his subconscious this was his true feeling toward the issue. Having thought into the situation, however, he may not have grabbed at the hand.
The paragraph ends in similar fashion. By saying that, “he hurried out of the house which could never be his own.” The novel is not informing us that Ichiro is destined to live a poor life, but rather in his own mind he is destined to live a life that is different than that of the Kumasaka’s. The house symbolizes more than a house in the physical sense; it is the embodiment of everything expressed by the person whose house it is.
This sets up an internal binary within Ichiro’s mind. He clearly creates a separation not only between himself and Americans but even with those Japanese that have assimilated. Following the deconstructionalist view, Ichiro seems to classify himself in a group that he himself views as the lower half of the binary. And even goes so far as to say he cannot change this. He confirms this as he later meets with his friend, also injured in battle, with possibly two years to live. Regardless of the friend’s grim situation Ichiro is willing to change places, as he can no longer live up to his past and is forever condemned to live in his status.
While Ichiro is now removed from jail, he is now faced with deeper problem of life. He is trapped in the lie that he feels his mother’s hatred has forced upon him, and he is subject to this. His numerous encounters, elaborate this point as he clearly shows his disdain for the life he was born into and has led himself to.
Close reading
No No Boy
“Dead, he thought to himself, all dead. For me you have been dead a long time, as long as I remember. You, who gave life to me and to Taro and tried to make us conform to a mold which never existed for us because we never knew of it, were never alive to us in the way that other sons and daughters know and feel and see their parents. But you made so mistakes. It was a mistake to have left Japan and to come to America and to have two sons and it was a mistake to think that you could keep us completely Japanese in a country such as America. With me you almost succeeded. You would have been happy and so might I have known a sense of completeness. But the mistakes you made were numerous enough and big enough, so they in turn, made inevitable my mistake. I have had much time to feel sorry for myself. Suddenly I feel sorry for you. Not sorry that you are dead but sorry for the happiness you have not known (p186).”
The event of this passage-the death of the main character‘s mother, is part of Okada’s novel, No No Boy. It takes place when Ichiro comes from Kenji’s house. Kenji is an Japanese-American boy who joined the Army. He lost his leg in the War and dies because the leg's infection advanced very fast. When Ichiro learns about his death, he gets sad and keeps thinking that his friend had the right to live because he deserved to; he was American and served it with wisdom, but Ichiro did not. When Ichiro, then, enters inside the house he gets a second shock, the death of his mother. But immidiately Ichiro feels that what he sees is not something new. To him his mother has long time that doesn't exist.
What Okada tries to address through this passage is an anger that the main character, Ichiro delivers to his mother though she has no life and no voice. His anger seems to be as a consequence of the World War II tracks left in the Japanese- American families lives, but in fact it is mostly because of the conflict that the assimilation process brings to different generation.
A mother complete Japanes, who rejects America in her identity, who refuses the reality, and never tries to assimilate has created around herself a fiction world that is never understood by her sons. She feels failed and kills herself. On the other hand, her son feels hatred for her because she has won to leave her tracks in his life, which doesn't have a sense since he refuses to join the American Army and has no identity. Our character, Ichiro feels no one, no boy. In fact he realizes that he belongs more to American world than Japanese one, because America symbolizes the present. It is clear the binary Odaka includes his character .
Ichiro’s mother is dead; however, her death doesn’t cause any mercy to him, “you have been dead a long time,” he says in his inside monologue, whereas his friend’s death, Kenji‘s lets him very sad. The word dead is used in a figurative manner and means no movement, no change, no feelings, no reflection, and no assimilation.These are the reasons why Ichiro has considered his mother dead. She didn’t have the ability to create a mother relationship with her sons. She didn’t care what her sons were like and never tried to understand them. She did not change herself and did not wanted her children to change too, trying to put her children in a world that was abstract, has no meaning, and could not function in the reality. That means to be dead. A dead person does not have feelings and doesn’t react toward what is going around, and so his mother didn’t try to understand her children, their challenged nature, and their assimilation, nor did she tried to understand the real situation of Japan.
The happiness that people try to find in America means to be American, but she doesn’t feel it. Assimilation is natural and means acceptance. Ichiro wants to be American because he wants to be accepted. However his mother kills herself to reject American influence from a world that she realizes that there was no more way to live as Japanese. Therefore, she is not an alive mother, therefore to Ichiro. A mother loves and care of her children and understands them like no one else could do and accepts their real identity. Their happiness should be part of her happiness.
Though Ichiro feels anger for her and “not sorry” that she’s dead, he is not able to hate. He feels bad for “the happiness you have not known,” and would like to imagine how that happiness would exist.
In fact, living as Japanese, as complete Japanese, would be the best way to enjoy the life according to Ichiro's mother. She wants her sons to take advantage of America for a good education that they would use in Japan. But Japan was physically and mentally far away from Ichiro and his brother. This was something that she never understood, but instead tried to condition and narrow their life; that was really wrong but not weird. Okada delievers the idead that when people base their concepts on different binaries-mother to Japanese/ American and American(Present)/Japanese (far) then, they create the conflict between them.In his novel, Okada sets a binary world to his characters. The mother is a binary woman- she rejects everything that is not “Japanese,” but she is left alone. Ichiro hates because he is not able to love. He judges his mother because he is not able to forgive her. Ichiro admits the impact of his mother in his life. He relates his refusing to join the American Army to his mother impact.
Indeed, we see a greater impact for the way he thinks and acts. Ichiro feels and acts as she does according to binary conceps, but with a huge difference; he is not part of the binary his mother belongs, but part of the present versus abstract and America versus Orientals. He doesn’t forgive her for her mistakes as well as she didn’t forgive her sons for being and thinking as Americas and thus kills herself. He rejects like she does and is a binary person. He hates his mother because he is not able to love her, and he judges her mother because he is not able to forgive her. It is her fault that he feels incomplete.
From the moment his mother dies there will be no more obstacle to enjoy life the way he wishes. We are left with the idea that assimilation is not a choice but a necessity, it is the identity of those who really love, tolerate, and want to live not as stranger but as familiar.
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