Silvestre Paramo
S. Hackney
Rhetoric 102
Rough Draft
2/12/13
The Difference
The novel When the Emperor was Devine by Julie Otsuka is so packed to the brim with imagery, that it almost feels like you are watching a movie the way the author chooses the way to write sentences with such carefulness and precision to ensure one person gets the overall tone of the book. By just taking out one excerpt and examining it word for word, it’s easy for any reader to paint a picture of what is happening. The part of the book being observed is only a passage of the book. The imagery expressed through words is something that is very hard to write out, and it is very well seen in this passage. The tone of the passage and also the characterization and detail is so simple but so strong in this excerpt.
Contrasting Japanese-Americans from Americans is well done as we see the boy ask the girl for the time, when she tells him that it is six o’ clock, he is left wondering about what “they” would be doing back at home. The way the word “they” is used in the book is pointed towards Americans. Since the Japanese Americans cannot be trusted by Americans anymore, Americans have also lost their respect in the Japanese Americans for sending them to these internment camps. Whereas Americans were probably calling the poor families in these camps racial slurs; the Japanese American families had also reduced the entire American population to one word, “they”. It is fascinating that by just giving a little thought to a word, so many things can be drawn from it.
From the perspective of the girl, things might be a little more difficult to overcome. Since the girl is growing up throughout the book, she is distancing herself little by little from her family. And although it does seem as if she does not care too much for her past, we see it in this passage when they explain that it had been six weeks since the last time that she had winded the watch that her dad gave her. The imagery captured from that one sentence can supply so much as far as hidden emotions in the girl’s mind. It might just be that she is trying to stay strong for her family, or it could be that she is too afraid of being vulnerable since she is going through her hormonal changes. Either way, looking back at the passage it can be inferred that the girl does not want any more time to pass. She wants time to stay still, so she can look back at the watch and remember all of the good times that she used to have with her family in the past. Isolating herself from time and from the Americans for putting her and her family in the camps.
Another thing that clearly contrasts Americans and Japanese-Americans is the tone being used in this passage. When the brother asks the sister what time it is, the tone captured from the brother’s voice is innocent and hopeful. All he wants to know about is his father, baseball, and remembering good times. But when the sister responds, it takes a much darker approach,