Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

1218 Words3 Pages

How Society can be Inhumane. Society can treat people with care and respect, other times, it can be very harsh and cruel. Unfortunately, society keeps proving people right about how it can be devastating to some people. In Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine, Japanese American families were sent to internment camps where they were degraded and left to fend for themselves when they were released, giving them little to no compensation. The main family in the novel is separated from their father long before they were sent to the camp. When they all returned home, nothing was the same. The hardships they face before, during, and after the camp will change everything. In Otsuka’s novel, the family experiences a person vs society conflict …show more content…

In the morning they had washed their faces in the long tin troughs and at night they had slept on mattresses stuffed with straw.” (Otsuka 30). The family boarded that train, not expecting anything of the living conditions. They had no clue if it would be clean and sanitary, or dirty and old. When they arrived, they were met with living conditions equal to that of a horse, making them feel degraded. They didn’t even have a bed, instead they were given mattresses stuffed with straw. Otsuka uses this conflict to show that society didn’t believe the Japanese Americans who were being sent to the internment camps deserved nothing more than the living conditions of an animal, therefore comparing them to one. This would eventually make the boy even more anxious, this is shown when he goes out onto the racetrack at night and walks around in the mud. Although the family were met with these harsh conditions, they still remembered and always thought back to their time outside of Tanforan, where life was much better. The family was being treated with such disrespect during these times, and society felt no remorse …show more content…

They saw themselves as the enemies who bombed Pearl Harbor, not the family who was unrightfully taken from their homes and placed in an internment camp. By seeing how other people viewed them just because of Pearl Harbor, they took it upon themselves to believe that they were the ones in the wrong, even viewing themselves as the enemy. This represents just how much persecution and discrimination against a group of people can even be seen in the way the think about themselves. Being the scapegoats of society can have a harsh toll on someones view of themselves. Because the blame was put on the innocent Japanese Americans, their perception of themselves was torn and manipulated. Society could have gone after the true suspects of the bombing, but instead decided to put all their anger and frustration towards innocent people. Conflicts between a small group of people and the majority of society can result in catastrophic changes to the scapegoats of society, changing their view of themselves, not just the

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