During the early 1940s, history's most gruesome acts against humanity were committed during the Holocaust as the Nazi's occupied western Europe. But right here in America, as we were fighting for the rights of humanity, we were condemning our own Japanese-American citizens.
Julie Otsuka's novel When The Emperor was Divine describes the journey one Japanese family undergoes as this very event occurs in Berkeley, California. Otsuka uses one of my favorite literary devices, borrowed from Existentialism, a stoic form of writing devoid of much emotion. This subtle tool is so essential to the core theme of the novel. As the Japanese were being dehumanized and their human rights and emotions were being stripped and ignored, Otsuka uses the stoic styling of writing to illuminate this thought. The same idea is employed in the nameless nature of the characters. Each member of the family is addressed by their role in the family : the boy, the girl, the father, etc.
As historical fiction does, Otsuka is creating her own scenario in an event that actually happened to enlighten readers more thoroughly of a crime against humanity that occurred and went mostly unnoticed.
No comments:
Post a Comment