Like Naomi Shihab Nye did in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, Julie Otsuka uses a traditional symbolic element—water—in a non-traditional capacity.
Earlier in the semester, I wrote a blog post comparing the role of water in three different poems in Nye’s collection. In these short pieces about life as a child of Middle Eastern immigrants, water represents both loss of and resolve in maintaining identity, distance between people and cultures, and the distances that must be traversed to feel anchored in a place.
Otsuka’s novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, addresses many of these same themes, albeit in a vastly different capacity. The main characters of the book, despite remaining unnamed and therefore deprived of an individualistic identity in the eyes of so many, are of a foreign heritage and suffering prejudices and abuses because of it. The author looks deeply at this idea of identity and individual humanity, and how it can be given and taken away by certain powers, particularly the government.
However, unlike the main characters in Nye’s poetry—particularly herself and her father—the family in When the Emperor Was Divine does not leave their home and life by choice. While Nye’s father left his home to move to the United States and form a sense of self outside of his cultural capacity alone, Otsuka’s characters are very American and being stereotyped and driven away to an internment camp because of their foreign heritage. In a sense, these are inverse experiences—one representing struggling to overcome stereotypes and understand the American ways that are so different from his culture, the other representing a truly American family that is subject to torment only because of its background, with which the members are very disconnected.
Despite the similarities and differences in the experiences written about in these two works, the role of water remains crucial. Otsuka ultimately uses water to represent regret, desolation, illusion, and hope. In the early chapters of the novel, there are multiple references to rain; they young boy is upset when he is unable to pack his umbrella. Arguably, this is representative of the fact that, after leaving his home, the boy (and his family) will have no mechanism of defense against the storm ahead. Meanwhile, however, water is noticeably absent in many situations. For example, on the train from Tanforan to the internment camp in Utah, the train runs out of drinking water for passengers. The train also travels by Intermittent Lake, which is full at times and empty at others. At the camp, there is no running water, and because it is in the desert, there are no naturally occurring bodies of water nearby. This represents water as a fantasy and symbol of hope—while the boy wishes there were oases, as he had always expected there to be, it is his dreams of water that seem to give him some hope for the future, despite the despair he often feels in their wake. The mother’s story about her last night with her husband, before his arrest, is the best representation as water representative of regret. He had asked her for a glass of water, and because she was so fatigued, the mother asked him to get it for himself. There is such deep despair and regret when the mother tells her son this story; however, again, it seems to be the hope that maybe, just maybe, one day, they will be back together that keeps her going. The mother wants only to get that cup of water for her husband; ironically, however, this also contributes to her deteriorating mental health, because she struggles to bear the grief and remorse.
The mother’s loss of identity, however, segues into Otsuka’s most non-traditional use of symbolic water. In so many cases, water represents cleansing and new beginnings, usually in a positive light. Here, however, that cleansing and new beginning is the opposite of positive. The family is being cleansed of their individuality, and their new beginning is life behind a fence, monitored and restricted in every way. And so the aforementioned absence of water from its usual places is not representative of resolve and stability but of dilution and emptiness.
As does Nye’s poetry, Otsuka’s novel never completely lets the readers feel that human resilience will fail. However, having read up to the end of the boy’s chapter, the future for this family seems bleak. They are less close, less well, less connected than they were initially. It is my hope, as I continue reading, that, again, like in Nye’s poetry, the sense of identity is regained by these individuals—that their resilience is not entirely washed away.
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