Loss Of Livelihood In 'When The Emperor Was Devine'

Ryan Phillips

Mr. Dranginis

English 9

2/23/2023

Loss of Livelihood in When the Emperor was Devine

When the Emperor was Devine, by Julie Otsuka is a novella that tells the story of a Japanese American family who endured internment during World War Two. The book focuses on four main characters, the boy, the girl, the mother, and the father all of which go unnamed. This family is taken from their homes and sent to an internment camp in Utah where they are incarcerated under the suspicion that they are spies. These people lose their necessities in life throughout the book like a stable family structure, home, and their entire livelihood. In the book, the main characters lose their livelihood as a result of the institutionalized racism they experience,

This makes it so that the family does not function like it once did. Starting with the Boy we can see from the beginning of the book he had a strong relationship with his sister. The first time we are introduced to the children they are playing with each other as the Girl “balanced the book on her head” (14) and the boy was yelling at her to “stand up straighter” (14). This once strong relationship seems to have been lost as once they entered the internment camp the boy seems to isolate himself. We can see this as he often “whispered to himself” (52) and spent time apart from the other kids at the camp. The boy does this out of sadness and longing for his father. Their father not being present, his choosing or not, has an extreme effect on this family and we can see that this causes a broken household, as the boy cannot function properly without his role model. This is shown when Otsuka says things like “he saw his father everywhere”(40) or “he was miles from home, and his father was not there” (56). We can also observe a change in the mother's character traits as she seems very paranoid, so much so that “she had reached for the key as soon as she woke, just to make sure it was still there. And every evening, before she closed her eyes, she had touched the key one last time” (78). The mother is terrified of not being able to return to their previous life and the idea that they might one-day return home is the only thing getting her through the day. This demonstrates the impact that the internment camp has had on her as she is desperate to get back home and paranoid about the thought that it might not be possible. A stable family is necessary for children so the impact that the father being taken away and having a closed-off mother is huge. Otsuka shows the impact of internment