Analyzing the Mother: Why so nonchalant?

        While reading the first section of When the Emperor was Divine, the mother's calm, nonchalant attitude stood out to me. Amidst a life-changing tragedy where you and your family are taken from your home to an open-air prison with no set return-date, I would expect a little concern. However, the mother goes about her business emotionless: killing their family dog like it is a bothersome chore, letting the family bird free with no parting words or emotions, or as Otsuka put it, "followed the rules" (9). One could chalk up this emotional disconnect from the narration of the story, being a manifestation of the emotional disconnection shown through the lack of names given the characters, but it also could be seen as a reflection of the woman's mental state.

       Is the woman's nonchalance the result of her expectation? Did she expect this sort of incarceration was looming, allowing her to mentally prepare for the situation she was about to face? This is a possibility, however I do not believe it accounts for her emotionless killing of White Dog, as her love and care for the animal would naturally invoke an emotive reaction.



      I think the most plausible explanation for this nonchalant behavior is the woman's warped mental state. On top of being amidst an intense global war, the woman had to contend with being marginalized by her society, creating a web of conflicts that is hard to escape from. The attacks on Pearl Harbor not only left her spiraling due to the mass casualties and attack on American soil, but also due to the imminent racist generalization towards the Japanese population. This evacuation was a mere consequence of this developing sequence of psychologically destructive events, forcing her to suppress her emotions and act in a nonchalant manner. She maintains her love for her husband and her children, but is past the point of emotional response.

Comments

  1. Bing AP LitOctober 25, 2023 at 10:30 AM

    I noticed this emotionless attitude as well as it stood out to me as a very interesting reaction for what was happening to their family. And i agree with your explanation as i also feel that hearing this news would dramatically effect ones mental heath. The multitudes of hurt being cast upon this family and this culture is bound to take affect in ones brain and ability to fight against discrimination and bad actions. But, i feel that i would go a step further for an exaplanation of this attitude. I think that the combination of her husband being gone, and the government order made the woman feel resigned. Once she had the feeling of helplessness, she shut off all her other emotions because she felt like it would happen whether or not she was emotionally involved.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Nameless Characters?

Image
        One of the first things that stood out to me while reading the first section of  When the Emperor was Divine was the decision of the author, Julie Otsuka, to omit the names of the characters, simply addressing them as "the woman," "the girl," or "the boy." There are plenty of reasons why Otsuka may have made this decision, and ultimately, we will never know without her outright explanation. Nevertheless, Otsuka's decision is a unique one, and one that most definitely was meant to serve a greater purpose in the understanding of the novel. Thus, my goal in this blog is to speculate as why Otsuka may have made such a radical literary move...         One possible reason for this decision is to take a step towards presenting the characters of the novel through the lens of American society. The Japanese population was not seen for their individual identities by the majority of the American people, seeing them instead as mere members of a threatening
Read more

The "Villain" in Kavalier and Clay

Image
 The "Villain" in Kavalier and Clay: In Kavalier and Clay, there is no singular villain. It is impossible to identify one person as the overarching villain like you can in Star Wars or Harry Potter or any Shakespearean work, but instead a group of people and/or ideology. For Joe, the villain is the Nazi regime, and by extension, the German population. Joe sees every German he comes across as the enemy, an extension of Adolf Hitler's deadly hand. Joe's life has been wrecked by the Nazis - he was forced to abandon his family, he lost his brother, his only beacon of hope, and has turned him into a marginalized spectacle of society as a Jewish refugee. Joe takes out this anger on every German he faces, judging them for their nationality and not for their personal values. For example, Joe's mission to kill the German scientist residing in Antartica was not at all a reflection of his hatred for the scientist himself, but instead his hatred for the German regime for whi
Read more