Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

487 Words1 Page

Imagine losing everything that is familiar. Family is far away, and in the span of a single night, everything has changed. These are the questions asked and answered by the mood in Julie Otsuka's book When the Emperor was Divine. In the text, a Japanese family is separated; the father is in a different internment than the camp as the woman and her two children struggle to keep hope. In her book, Otsuka manipulates the mood to show how this family is feeling during these traumatic times. During uncertain times, people rely on routine and the familiar to feel calm. When in an unfamiliar situation, people will put aside their emotions and do what needs to be done. The mood gives a look into how a character feels and lets the reader sympathize. …show more content…

She calmly “[C]aught the chicken that had been living in the yard since fall and snapped its neck beneath the handle of a broomstick”(Otsuka 9). The text doesn't properly address the sudden violence and keeps on its monotonous tone of housework, and the woman prepares it for dinner as if it were a normal day. The mood takes a sharper turn, however, when the woman kills the dog with one blow from a shovel, yet she only comments that “the shovel was the right choice”. Better[] than a hammer.”(Otsuka 11). Even though she does both these actions without hesitation, no feelings of malice are present, demonstrating that the woman did this out of necessity. Earlier it was stated that there are no pets allowed at the camp and left alone both animals would die. The mood, while dark, allows the woman's reasoning to be less opaque. She’s trying to do what’s best for her family. After arriving at the internment camp, things start to feel more hopeless. They live in a small barrack in the middle of the desert, surrounded by barbed

Open Document