When The Emperor Was Divine Thesis

His father was taken away in the middle of the night for something he didn’t do. The boy watched as his father left with only a bathrobe and slippers on as he was denied his dignity and stripped of his humanity. This occurred in Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine, a book that depicts a family of Japanese Americans that were torn apart and sent to an internment camp. They experienced prejudice and racism while living in conditions that weren’t fit for thriving. This book represents the thousands of Japanese Americans that suffered during World War II because of the fear that stemmed from the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan. Men were separated from their families and accused of aiding in the bombings, while the rest of the family were

Julie Otsuka demonstrates how comfort and familiarity are connected to the trauma and loss of separation from your family and home.

Julie Otsuka utilizes characterization and juxtaposition to illustrate how comfort is sought to deal with trauma and the impact of loss. While explaining the characteristics of the boy, Otsuka writes, “The boy did not have a best friend but he had a pet tortoise that he kept in a wooden box filled with sand right next to the barrack window.” (60) Through the demonstration of the boy’s relationship with the tortoise, Otsuka shows the importance of a source of comfort when you have been isolated from family and friends. The boy’s relationship with the tortoise is compared to having a best friend which shows the importance of the relationship. The boy finds comfort in the tortoise, which allows him to forget about his lack of relationship with others outside the internment camp. After many months of confinement, the boy recalls hearing “...his mother praying. ‘Our father, Who art in heaven…’ And in the morning at sunrise, coming from the other side

During the boy’s journey on the train to the internment camp, the author wrote, “In the morning he woke up longing for a glass of Coke. Just one, with lots of ice, and a straw.” (59) The symbolism of the glass of coke represents the boy’s home which implies that the boy is desperate to feel the familiarity of the people he used to know and the neighborhood he grew up in. The boy had enjoyed the coke. Similarly, the boy enjoyed the way his life used to be. Both were forcibly taken away and he had to face the loss of his old life. The boy’s wish for a glass of coke shows how he longed for familiarity while he faced the loss of his life before being sent to the internment camp. While in the internment camp, the woman tells her son, “She dreamed. Of warm nights in Kagoshima and chirping bell crickets and red paper lanterns drifting one by one down the river. ‘I was a girl again. I was five years old again and fishing for trout with my father.’” (94-95) Julie Otsuka uses sensory imagery of the woman’s childhood in Japan to evoke the mood of longing because it allows the reader to understand the woman's emotions and her struggle with her confinement in the internment camp. Through the woman’s recollection of her childhood, she can think of happier times instead of her current situation which has been very hard on her mental health. Through the comfort and