Author: Eli Faber
Julie Otsuka’s novel, When the Emperor was Divine, develops a central theme of craving for home, being back together in one piece and returning to the life the family had in Berkeley, by placing the family in an environment that is dry and barren, separated from time and space with their lives seemingly coming to a halt as soon as they enter the camp, which contrasts with the family’s real home in Berkeley right next to the water, and emphasizing the symbolism with water developed in the passage.
As soon as the family enters the concentration camp, they are seemingly separated from reality, both location and time-wise. They don’t know what day it is, or the time. The Girl’s watch is forever stopped at 6 PM, the universal time for dinner for American families. She’s stuck at the time, 6 PM, desperately hoping for her own family to come back together and share a dinner meal. The Woman says “I don’t even know what day it is”; she has no concept of time at the camp, and the days whirl by, leaving her clueless to even the day of the week. The mundane and bleak nature of the camp leaves her disconnected with reality, and with no sense of purpose she has no motivation to do anything, leaving her broken, mindlessly lying on her bed. The Boy wakes up from a dream and cries out, “Where am I?” He still is left confused by their surroundings despite being there for months at that point; its foreign nature leaves the boy crying out in shock when waking up in this strange, alien land, and he feels almost scared to wake up in such a strange environment that is not their home. The placement of the family in a concentration camp makes them mentally lost and disconnected from reality.
The setting of the concentration camp is tense, and the physical aspects of the camp are incredibly dry, dusty, and barren, representing the desolation of the camp. They’re placed in an area that is completely undesirable and useless, and the family being shoved into this desolate area by the American government makes them to be equally as undesirable and useless as the land they are forced into. Out of sight, out of mind: the family and other Japanese Americans are erased by the government, and treated not as citizens, but enemy aliens. They are fenced in and treated like dangerous criminals, and armed guards constantly monitor them. The boy shows the effects of being trapped in this prison environment, with him wondering if he had done something wrong to be trapped in the prison. He recounts times when he misbehaved, and wonders if these are the reasons why he is trapped in this terrible place. Additionally, the dusty nature and heat of the camp often works as an antagonist: the dust fills their lungs and blinds them and the heat is unbearable in the summer. The envrionment of the concentration camp is dry and empty, the weather often is a malevolent force, and the family is physically fenced in and constantly watched, making the concentration camp a disastrous environment.
The family’s real home is in Berkeley, an area right next to the water, which connects to the motif of water throughout the novel, the water representing rescue and a return to the family they once had in Berkeley. When the Woman, Girl, and Boy go back to Berkeley, the smell of the sea hits them when they get home, a smell that they’ve missed over the years being away from their home, and when they open the tap, they relish in the cool water, contrasting with the dry and dusty concentration camp they just returned from. Their home in Berkeley is plentiful in water, representing a happier time before their internment in a concentration camp, and being a place that the family symbolically longs for while in the camp. While imprisoned, the family constantly dreams of water; the Boy dreams of Topaz, Utah, back when it was full of water; the Boy dreams of the Japanese emperor, Hirohito, coming with ships gliding on ocean water to save him; the Woman dreams of bringing the father a glass of water, stating “in my dreams he’s still thirsty”. Water represents their home in Berkeley, it represents rescue and a reprieve, and it represents the family being together.
The setting in When the Emperor was Divine plays a major role in characterizing the family’s desires to go back to a more peaceful time. They constantly long for water while placed in the dry, dusty, and barren concentration camp, the out-of-place and desolate nature of the concentration camp itself setting up a contrast later fully explored when the family returns to their actual home plentiful with water.
The Megaphone 