When The Emperor Was Divine By Julie Otsuka

Barbed wire fences, guard towers, the sweltering hot desert. This was what life was like in a Japanese internment camp. When the Emperor Was Divine is a novel written by Julie Otsuka. During World War II, the book follows a Japanese family sent away from their home to a Japanese internment camp in the United States. Otsuka does not name the characters but the story follows, The Woman, The Boy, The Girl, and The Father. The Father was arrested and sent away, communicating with the family by letters. The Woman, Girl, and Boy are in an internment camp for most of the book. Throughout the book, we see the families struggle, with constant change being a prominent theme throughout the novel. The letters from the Father seem to bring a sense of

When the Woman, Boy, and Girl are on the train to the internment camps, the girl dreams about her father, stating that “He was wearing his fancy French shoes and we were in a boat going to Paris” (45). At this moment the girl’s life is about to change completely, and her dream of her father seems to represent a time when her father was still with them and everything was normal. The dream represents her idea that if her father was there then everything would go back to the way it used to be. The dream shows that the girl views her father as a figure of normalcy in her life. Additionally, when describing the father the boy says “Whenever the boy knocked on his door his father would look up and smile and put down whatever it was he was doing. Don’t be shy, he’d say. He read the examiner every morning before work and he knew the answers to everything.” (62). The boy is remembering memories of his father before the camp. Now that his father is gone the boy is clinging to these memories of his father, and associates all memories of him with when they were back at their house and everything was normal. The boy's thoughts seem to symbolize the idea that if their father comes back everything would be the way it used to be before. Further supporting the idea that the Father is a symbol of stability for the family. Through the girl's dreams, and the boy's memories the

When the Father reunites with his family after the war, the children believe that “the man who stood there before [them] was not [their] father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in [their] father’s place.” (132). The children’s memories of the father portray him as a strong, handsome man who loved to laugh. After he returns home they see that he has aged, and become quiet and closed off. While at the camp the family seemed to imagine that when their father returned it would be like nothing had changed, but as the scene unfolds they see him as a completely new person. When the family returns home after the war, they face many challenges trying to adjust to their new life and the way people are treating them. The boy states that the mother “made up new rules. Change out of your street clothes the minute you come home from school. Don’t let the water run while brushing your teeth. Whatever you do, don’t waste. (128). Before the war and the internment camps, they used to have enough money to travel and never had to worry about not having enough clothes or water. Over the past few years, this family's life has changed drastically. Now the family does not have enough money to pay for clothes, and they have to worry about having enough necessities. This reflects the father’s change. Before they returned home, they imagined everything