The Buddha In The Attic Summary

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In “The Buddha in the Attic” by Julie Otsuka is a fiction novel that is based around picture brides that is sent to San Francisco. The author is demonstrating the hard work that most immigrants have to go through in order to enhance their lives. This novel can contribute to a history lesson in a sense of war and how the Japanese was treated during that time. I am against the author’s way of fooling around with the women’s emotional state; she puts men as superior beings and the women are kept as slaves and dull human beings. Yet I do agree with Otsuka when the picture brides pray to different gods to make their life better and I acknowledge the hard work the picture wives had to go through.
“The Buddha in the Attic” is a short novel that …show more content…

Throughout the novel, Otsuka continuously makes remarks toward women being belittled and not having a say towards anything. The picture brides went over as immigrants, not knowing english and trying to adjust to our own culture. This was difficult for them because they had to make sacrifices in order for them to have a positive outcome while being in America. Yet it was not easy for them because during the 1900s women was better known as staying in the kitchen; meanwhile for the picture wives they had to do manual labor besides taking care of the children and cleaning the house. Otsuka stated “ A girl must blend into a room: she must be present without appearing to exist” (p. 6). This statement alone proves how women are looked at throughout the novel; the women are there but just to do the basic doings and have little interactions with other people. Otsuka makes several different points on how women do not really have any importance besides to bare children and do house duties. Yet all of this could have been avoided if the picture wives were not used mentally and emotionally. The picture wives had pictures of their spouses who were young, healthy and very wealthy, but when they got off the boat they saw old men that saw their ad in the paper and played them (p. 18). The picture that their spouses sent them were twenty years old and

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