Red
The color red is associated with Naomi and appears at
both happy and difficult moments in her life. She links red with
New Year’s, when her family gives gifts to her and Stephen. Every
gift she receives—a change purse, a brooch, a necklace, and others—features
red prominently. Red also dominates Naomi’s memory of the train
ride to Slocan. She remembers carrying a red umbrella and wearing
a shirt decorated with red flowers. When she recalls standing on
a bridge with Obasan before Grandma Nakane’s funeral, the “wine-colored
loafers” she wore stick out in her mind. The vividness of red, which
is among the only colors Naomi mentions consistently, suggests the
vividness of her memories themselves. She doesn’t recall everything
that happened to her when she was little, but the memories she does
have are bright and intense, like the red possessions she treasured
as a girl.
Military Men
Men with guns, specifically white men with guns, haunt
Naomi. As an adult, she dreams about them often. In one of her recurring
nightmares, military men control three naked, powerless Asian women; in
another, bloodthirsty armed men watch a private family ceremony.
The dangerous men in her dreams point to Naomi’s two central childhood
traumas: the abuse she suffered at the hands of Old Man Gower, and
the persecution she and her family endured at the hands of white
Canadians. The guns represent her tormentors’ potential to do harm.
The mastery the clothed soldiers have over the naked women reflects
Old Man Gower’s sexual power and abuse, and the women’s humiliation
echoes Naomi’s disturbing and shaming response. The fact that Naomi
dreams about these men so frequently, even as an adult, shows that
while she can suppress her fear during her waking hours, she is
subconsciously still in the grips of her difficult childhood. As
she says, “We die again and again. In my dreams, we are never safe
enough.” She doesn’t live in fear, but some part of her always worries
that what happened once could happen again.
The Sea
The sea is an essential and part of Naomi’s family heritage.
She comes from a line of fishermen and boat builders who feel most
at home on the ocean. The government’s seizure of their boats not
only robs them of their livelihood, but also of their connection
to the place they feel happiest. Their banishment to the center
of the country, first to Slocan with its muddy lake, and then to
Granton with its dusty plains, is doubly painful. A forced relocation
to anywhere at all would be bad enough, but to be made to move away
from the ocean, which fed their families and seemed to embrace them,
is almost impossible to bear. The novel’s first chapter, which depicts Uncle
on his annual pilgrimage to the coulee, underlines the importance
of the sea and the family’s distance from it. The coulee is a special
place to Uncle because it reminds him of the ocean. While he does
find a measure of peace there, his attachment to it is poignant and
sad. It is not the real sea, after all; it is just a pale shadow
of the place Uncle loved.
