Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

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What Life Once Was: The American Dream is something that millions of people from every country try their whole lives to obtain. Although they all work very hard, plenty of them still are not able to acquire such a life. The struggles that the family is going through are never ending. In Julie Otsuka’s “ When the Emperor was Divine”, the family faces continual hardships. They start with living the American Dream, then they are sent into the internment camps which creates much of their problems through their overall bad living environment. Once they get out of the camps, they still experience more problems when they get home. The struggles just don’t seem to ever stop. The main characters in the story, the family, are trying to obtain the American …show more content…
A lot of the time people just think about themselves when going through hardships, not realizing that everybody has their own struggles. Although the family was removed from their American Dream into the internment camps, they still had stuff to look at. Even though the internment camp living conditions aren’t the best, they still have a place to sleep, food to consume, and even a free education, which some countries do not provide. “A dust storm would blow for hours”, “then a baby would begin to cry, or a dog would start barking” (Otsuka 77). But the thing is, everyone that is in the camp all have to go through the same struggles. When they finally arrive back home after the war, they realize it’s trash and that it smells bad. The house did not look anything like it did when they left, they even had new neighbors after all the time they’d been gone. They returned home to “Broken bottles were scattered across the yard”, “where our mother’s rosebush once stood there was only a clump of dead weeds” (Otsuka 106). The whole time they were gone, everything seemed to

Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

and went home and began to pack”(Otsuka 3). The family was being sent away but the reason was one thing and one thing only: Race. When society lives in fear, a single group of people are excluded and feared. Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine is a heartfelt book about the racism the Japanese Americans experienced after the Pearl Harbor attacks of 1941. The family must survive in the horrific internment camps without their father, who was unjustly taken from them for being Japanese. They must…

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Analysis Of Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

This is a book report about the novel When the Emperor Was Divine written by Julie Otsuka. When the Emperor Was Divine is a short novel about a Japanese-American family that goes to the internment camps during World War Two. It is told from a mostly omniscient point of view and provides a descriptive narrative on the lives of the nameless mother, son, daughter, and father. The namelessness of the characters provides a lot to the novel. Despite the family's citizenship, they are still nobody to the…

Words 950 - Pages 4

Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

they were released, they could never go back to the life they once had. When the Emperor was Divine, written by Julie Otsuka, tells the tale of a family that was forced to live in one of these internment camps for years. This book shows the struggles and changes that both the children and parents faced, trying to survive in a country that was once their own, but has now labeled them “enemy aliens”. When the Emperor was Divine illustrates how xenophobia can poison society, destroying people’s lives…

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Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

Nameless invasion Julie Otsuka examines how fear can cause people to alter their identities in her book When the Emperor was Divine. People alter as a result of fear because they may not be able to withstand the strain and stress. The family in the WWII set book is divided from one another. The novel tells the story of a Japanese American family’s ordeal in internment camps during World War Two. The father is arrested by the FBI because he is suspected of being a spy. The mother has to take care…

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Examples Of Injustice In Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

completely innocent and were blamed by association. The family in When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka illustrated how injustice can change people for good or for bad. The internment camps had a huge effect on the sister changing her into a negative person. In the beginning of the book, the sister was an excellent student who obeyed her mother’s request.They were running their daily routine on the day before they had to move. However, when she returned home from school she realized,…

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The Role Of Japanese-Americans In Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

In “When the Emperor was Divine”, by Julie Otsuka, the story describes at one point how Japanese-Americans were treated unfairly and harshly in many ways by the people who ran the camp. To begin with, numerous Japanese-Americans were forced to be sent into these deserted and dusty camps where they need to follow certain rules and guidelines. The rules mainly stated what Japanese-Americans weren’t allowed to do, like for example they couldn’t read books that were in Japanese nor could they have any…

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When The Emperor Was Divine By Julie Otsuka

in the country with their families for the sole crime of being Japanese. In Julie Otsuka’s novel When the Emperor was Divine, she writes about a Japanese American family forced to live in an internment camp after the events of Pearl Harbor. The FBI takes their father to a dangerous alien camp and separates him from his family. After the war ends, they are released but can never fully go back to normal. The family in Otsuka’s novel experiences guilt over Pearl Harbor and the war; despite not doing anything…

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