When The Emperor Was Divine Thesis

Out of Touch With Society To some people, loosing a simple item can unleash a typhoon of emotions. People will panic at the thought of misplacing their phones or forgetting when they last wore their favorite shirt. These accessory losses are little to nothing compared to the loss the Japanese American people suffered during the second World War. Julie Otsuka, a recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Asian American Literary Award, the American Library Association Alex Award, wrote a novel based on her own family history. The novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, is the story specifying one of the many Japanese American families who was involuntarily evacuated out of their home and relocated to internment camps. When the family leaves their

When the family was forced out of their home, they had to leave behind their pets, furniture, valuables, Japanese products, and their home. The family had to dispose of their old life style. Consequently, they knew that once they had made their way onto the train they knew they would lose their social class. The luxuries of being wealthy were no longer in their grasp. However, the family is allowed to bring basic necessities to their internment camp. Ostuka claims that “there were things they could take with them: bedding and linen, forks, spoons, plates, bowls, cups, clothes” (p. 9). Items that were permitted were indispensable for eating and sleeping. Any belongings that could have hinted at the family's previous life style were left behind. All of the Japanese Americans at the internment camps had similar items, no groups of people were classified as poverty-stricken. The drastic change in lifestyle compelled them to loose sense in who they once were and the life they once

While the family spent time in the internment camp, watches began to break and calendars had been inaccurately marked. Therefore, the family found difficulty trying to keep their own timeline in order. The children would forget how much time they had spent at the camp, and eventually come close to forgetting if they had ever had a life outside of the camp. Losing time while in confinement is not uncommon. In an experiment performed by Philip G. Zimbardo, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, men were given the assignment to act as leaders of a group of prisoners and as prisoners. The actions that took place in that experiment were recorded in Zimbardo’s “The Stanford Prison Experiment.” The men who participated in the experiment also found themselves losing track of time. Zimbardo describes prisons as “machines for playing tricks with the human conception of time. In [their] windowless prison, the prisoners often did not even know whether it was day or night” (p. 109). Without seeing the outside world it was difficult to distinguish how many days had gone by. While the family in When the Emperor Was Divine had access to the outside world, the everyday mundane routine made it challenging to differentiate between three months ago from yesterday. The time the family loses while in the camp puts them drastically far behind