Julie Otsuk A Literary Analysis

Suffer: to undergo, be subjected to, or endure (pain, distress, injury, loss, or anything unpleasant). The Japanese Americans had to suffer, just because they looked like the enemy. The book showed the suffering and horrible conditions the Japanese Americans had to live through for about three and a half years. Julie Otsuka shows this very well in her book by using literary devices such as imagery and many more. One particular piece of evidence to show that the Japanese Americans had to live in horrible conditions at the time is when Julie Otsuka writes, “It was 1942. Utah. Late summer. A city of tar-paper barracks behind a barbed-wire fence on a dusty alkaline plain high up in the desert. The wind was hot and dry…”(49) Otsuka uses imagery to write this sentence. The reader can imagine being in the hot desert living behind a barbed-wire fence where there is always extreme heat and high temperature. Of course, no one would like to live there at all, but the Japanese Americans were forced to live in these horrible conditions.

His suit was faded and worn. His head was bare. He moved slowly, carefully, with the aid of a cane, a cane we had never seen before.”(131)To write this sentence, Otsuka uses imagery. This sentence shows the result of what happened to the father after he came back from his unjust imprisonment. The father probably experienced something horrible to have aged so much, lose all his hair, and to even have problems with walking. He had changed so much from when before he left that his children could barely recognize