When the Emperor Was Divine

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2002

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapter 3

Chapters 4-5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Character Analysis

The Mother

The mother is a character who is attuned both to the brutal necessities of their time and to the seemingly fewer essential demands of vanity. On the one hand, she seems calculating and unsentimental as she packs up the home, kills the dog, releases the pet bird, and prepares in a practical way for the brutal trip. This characterization might seem to indicate that she is entirely practical. But she is also invested in the non-practical concerns of her image, rationing her lipstick and her Ponds cream, lamenting that if she has bags under her eyes, her husband might not recognize her when they are reunited.

Her preoccupation with her looks is not, however, an indication that she is a shallow character. Her ability to maintain her looks is essentially linked to her ability to maintain her identity, and the question of the lipstick and the Ponds cream becomes symbolic of that struggle to hang on to her own face and identity. Later, when her depression has become overwhelming, she relinquishes her attempts to control her appearance, wearing a scarf on hear head, along with baggy trousers, as she stares out the window. The reader sees the link between the idea of controlling your own identity and feeling a sense of agency in the course of your own life.

The Girl

Like the mother, the girl is very aware of beauty and appearances. In the first chapter, she is curious as to whether there is something wrong with her face when her classmates stare at her, and she continues to compare herself to other women when she is on the train. As part of the unified “we” that represents the disenfranchised family, she continues to be conscious of the community’s gaze, noting the fact that their neighbors neither saw them off nor welcomed them back from their journey.

The Boy

The boy shows a certain ability to resist the depressing circumstances of the internment camp, not only holding on to the Emperor’s name, but also continuing to enjoy baseball and reading about outlaws. He longs for his father and clings to memories of him, especially as symbolized in the Oxford shoes he brought to the camp. He is young enough to engage in magical thinking, frequently fantasizing about visits from his father and his father’s return. This proclivity lends a sense of continuity to the poignant wishful-thinking embodied in the final image of the fourth chapter, when the children hope that the things they’ve lost continue, magically, somewhere just outside the boundaries of their new way of life.

The Father

Although the father is absent for most of the story, the reader learns about him through the memories of the boy. He is described as “a small handsome man with delicate hands and a raised white scar on his index finger that the boy, as a young child, had loved to kiss” (62). In a page-long string of recalled details, the boy’s memories paint the portrait of the father as a kind and gentle man. This is consistent with the fact that he is constantly writing to them and signing his letters “From Papa, With Love” (59).

This depiction contrasts sharply to the angry father who voices his rage at the injustice of the internment, in the final section of the book. In between, the father is depicted, upon his return to the home, as tired, saddened, and lost. Although he has been returned to his family, he has been irrevocably transformed by his experience during the war, depressed and hardened by his treatment at the hands of both his government and the suspicious neighbors who refuse to allow his reentry to society after he is back.