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Uprooted: Analyzing The Social Conflict In When The Emperor Was Divine

1247 Words5 Pages

Chase E. Darby
Mrs. Vermillion
Honors English 10
20 March 2023
Uprooted: Analyzing the Social Conflict in When the Emperor was Divine Moving can be difficult, especially if friends and family are being left behind. Some people do not mind it because maybe they are moving to a nicer place or they’re excited meet new people. However, this is not the case in Julie Otsuka’s novel, When the Emperor was Divine.
The reader follows a family that has been uprooted from their home and forced to live in a
Japanese internment camp during World War II after the bombings of Pearl Harbor. The family, which consists of an unnamed mother, daughter, and son, has to find a way to live in these horrible conditions while also facing the reality of racism …show more content…

This is one of the many things that the government takes away from them. The mother is out running errands when she saw the sign telling her that she and her family had to leave. Immediately after she saw the sign, she turned around to go pack. She told her children that they would be taking a trip and “they could bring with them only what they could carry” (Otsuka 12). Not long after this, the boy is seen trying his best to pack his belongings: “He threw in his clothes and tried to close the lid but the suitcase was very full. He sat on top of it and the lip sank down slowly. Suddenly he stood up again. The lid sprang open” (Otsuka 18). The boy is packing everything he can into his suitcase. They are only allowed to pack what they can. This is troubling because there are a lot of items that an individual needs for basic comfort. The boy is struggling to pack all the belongings he wishes to bring to what he believes is a trip. One of the many items he really wants to bring is his umbrella, but he could not fit it in his suitcase because of all the other possessions he needed to pack. Even the most basic of comforts is being taken away from them even before they are at the internment camp. The family deals with varying trials, such as racism and poor living conditions. Once they arrive at the internment camp, the family immediately faces one of their trials, “Inside the mess …show more content…

The family in this book struggles trying to live everyday life after the traumatic events that took place within the internment camps that changed their lives because of the horrible conditions within them. This societal conflict reveals that many people would rather turn a blind eye or ignore the cruelty that is going on around them than treat everyone equally. In stories and in real life, people tend turn their head away from the suffering that is right in front of them, either because they refuse to believe it is happening or they are too prideful to do anything about it. Taking pride in one’s nation can be good, but it can also blur the lines between equality and ignorance of the happenings around

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