Ww2 Rhetorical Analysis

The tone in the first chapter is apathetic towards the treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. “She read the sign from top to bottom...She wrote down a few words on the back of a bank receipt then turned around and went back home to pack” (3). The lack of adjectives to describe emotion makes the woman seem as if she has already accepted her fate and cannot even feel anything. “She had not seen her husband since his arrest last December” (10). Her lack of curiosity makes the woman seem as if she does not care for her husband or his fate. After packing to leave, the mother thinks about the day in which they will leave. She thinks,“Then they would pin their identification numbers to their collars and grab their suitcases and climb up onto the bus and go to wherever it was they had to go” (22). By having the sentence structure be a long, unbroken sentence, almost

“I did it. I poisoned your reservoirs. I sprinkled your food with insecticide” (140). The verbal irony conveys anger and frustration because the father finds it ridiculous that the Americans believe that he, one person, is responsible for so much damage. “So go ahead and lock me up. Take my children. Take my wife. Freeze my assets. Seize my crops” (143). The verbal irony here exists to show his frustration that he is powerless to stop the army from taking everything he loves, but he still wants the interrogators to feel is anger and frustration. “Inform me of my crime. Too short, too dark...Put it down in writing-is nervous in conversation...and I’ll sign on the dotted line. Is treacherous” (143). He is not listing crimes rather he is listing racial traits. By using verbal irony he is able to convey how ridiculous the things he is accused of are and how frustrated he is about his situation. The speaker shows his frustration of how he and other Japanese-Americans are treated through