War-Manzanar-Leaving-School-The Return

Plot:

Exposition: War

            With the bombing of Pearl Harbor infecting America with paranoid thoughts of Japanese espionage, the government makes some seriously immoral decisions.

            Even though they actually have no real constitutional power to do so, they arrest innocent men, like papa and take all Japanese Americans from their own homes and disperse them throughout Central America without any real intentions.

            The exposition is really just about the survival of one Japanese American family withstanding and waiting out the madness as calmly as possible.

Rising Action: Manzanar

            Upon arriving at Manzanar, nothing seems to be set up for or organized for them, so ironically, they end up prepping and building a lot of the camp on their own.

            Many of the internees grow irritated of the bad food, crowdedness, and lack of privacy. Riots break out and people are tired of being interned for no good reason.

            Although Jeanne’s family is relatively normal, papas return changed everything. He came back violent, alcoholic, and unfriendly. The type of man you don’t want at the head of your household. 

Climax: Leaving

            During this point in the book, just as they were forced into internment, they are being forced back out into a world that is completely different than what they have grown acquainted to.  The event causes the most amounts of concern and stress throughout the entire book.

            It also leaves their entire family in a predicament, they have no home or jobs to go back to, and once their gone, there’s no turning back.

Falling Action: School

            Once her family is out of Manzanar, the lives of everybody is affected. Jeanne needs to learn how to become American and Japanese at the same time, and papa hits rock bottom.

            Jeanne goes to public school, and even though she was crowned queen at the school dance, she is still left feeling uncomfortable, and completely out casted. In other words, she was right back where she left off; it was exactly like being out casted from the world in Manzanar.

Resolution: The Return

            At this part in the book, Jeanne, who is all grown up now, returns to the ruins of Manzanar with her husband and kids.

For her, the experience includes hearing the voice of her dead mother and finally thinking about her father as something more than a broken alcoholic. Maybe even as her "first bubbly sense of liberation”(Houston52:1).

For so long she had held Manzanar and all of its memories deep inside her, but when she returns, she finally gets the closer that she so deeply deserved.   

*http://www.tellingstories.org/internment/

This link includes the many other stories of people who were interned just like Jeanne and her family were. It helps give a better understanding of what families and people went through just because of their heritage.

Analyzing a Better Way to Write

Figurative Language:

Imagery:

“If anything made that country habitable it was the mountains themselves, purple when the sun dropped and so sharply etched in the morning light the granite dazzled almost more than the bright snow lacing it” (Houston 97:2). This example of imagery paints a very descriptive picture of the beautiful scenery around them and the feeling papa must of felt just looking at those mountains.

Simile:

“But he was running along the decks, like Paul Revere, bringing the news, and didn’t have time to explain”(Houston 6:3). This simile is comparing the sudden news of the British invasion to the sudden feeling they had when news of Pearl Harbor spread.

Metaphor:

“When he knew everyone was watching this- we were his audience, this dinning room his theater-…” (Houston 57:1). This metaphor compares the dinning room to a theater because he made an audience out of his family.

Alliteration:

“It only happened when he was singing or when someone else sang a song that moved him”(Houston 89:1). The same occurring “S” sound in the words singing, someone, else, and song make this an alliteration.

Hyperbole:

“That knocked all of us younger kids down at once, with fevers and vomiting” (Houston 30:1). The exaggeration that it knocked them down right away is what makes this sentence a hyperbole.

Personification:

“Every stone was a mouth, speaking for a family, for some man who had beautified his doorstep”(Houston 190:2). When it says that every stone has a mouth and is speaking, it is personifying the rock with human characteristics, which makes it personification.

Onomatopoeia:

“She let out two tiny groans “unh unh””(Houstan136: 1). When you spell out a sound or action being made, an onomatopoeia is formed.  

Oxymoron:

“They see their boy and girl tossed into the normal awkward growing up stage, but can offer little assistance or direction in their turbulent course…”(Houston102: 1). When the 2 words “normal” and “awkward are used together, it creates a contradiction because the 2 word have almost a complete opposite meaning; and because of that, it also creates an oxymoron.

Allusion:

“I had used a low cut sarong to win the contest. But once chosen, I would be a white-gown figure out of Gone With the Wind; I would be respectable”(Houston 178:1). By casually referencing Gone With the Wind, Jeanne made an allusion.

Idiom:

“When your mother and your father are having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting?” (Houston 64:1). When papa says this while he is being interviewed about his views on the war, he does not mean this in a literal way; he means it as a simpler way of understanding his position, making it an idiom.

A Family Better Understood

Characterization:

                                                             The Wakatsuki Family 

          Jeanne:  The main character and the protagonist. She is the youngest member of the Wakatsuki clan, and is loved by her father. Jeanne is a very attentive little girl and recalls on her and her families involvements before, during, and after her time in Manzanar. You can tell that she adds an unemotional effect to the book, separating her emotions from factual events and commenting now and then showing that she is coming to terms with her own memories.  As the book is just beginning, she is a very innocent and naïve 7 year old, but as the book goes on and she gets older, her outlook on life drastically changes. She grows to lose that innocence in a sense that she now recognizes the truths behind Manzanar, herself, and her family.

            Papa:  Leader of the family and Jeanne’s father. Papa became one of the most complicated and tragic characters throughout the book. Being a noncitizen of the United States and nearly not existing back in Japan, has left papa with nowhere to belong and no place to call home. The only thing left to papas name is his business, house, family, and satisfaction in having succeeded in in the United States even though all chances were against him. When he was taken away from his family and charged with un-loyalty to the U.S, he lost everything to his name, ripped his family apart, and his honor and pride was turned into resentment and anger. Papas in a sense a strong example in which used to show what the internment, and government itself, did to destroy even some of the most loving people.

            Mama:  Jeanne’s mother and matriarch. Mama was always very patient and caring of her family, especially her husband when he seemed to get out of hand. She was a very dignified and respectable woman. Although papa was very hostile and violent towards her, she was one of the first to forgive him, showing her commitment to her own family. Whenever money was needed, she was there to provide, whether it was getting a job at the cannery or being a dietician. When the barrack needed patching up, she was there to patch it.  When Jeanne needed assistance in finding a dress, she was there to help find her the perfect dress that shows her beauty, while also being very modest. Mama bared the entire burden and didn’t complain about it once; her selfless behavior fueled her family to be strong in times of hardships.

A Family Life Confined

Theme

A Family Life Confined:

     In the beginning of the book, her family is relatively normal, but as the book goes on, it is clear that the Wakatsukis begin to fall apart. The way they are obligated to live in Manzanar took a major toll on all of them. One of the major aspects was that her father’s strong character wasn’t there for anybody to depend on anymore.

     The collapse of her family can be first seen when they start to ditch their family mealtime and start to get acquainted to the mess hall lifestyle. When they stop eating their meals together, they stop connecting, as a family should.  She finds herself longing for her old dining table back in her old home. All this time without her family leaves her with no mentor and very little guidance.  

     When her father returns from custody, it doesn’t go as well for the family as they previously thought. He came back delusional and bitter, and is no longer the man that her family depended on. Later, most of her older siblings abandon her family and transfer to New Jersey, showing the affects that Manzanar had on close to all families involved.

     Jeanne seems to blame her family’s collapse on Manzanar, rather than the entire war itself. While the war is the reason the camp exists, it only seems to directly affect the world outside of them. The everyday problems and injustices are the things she seems to focus on the most for the changes in her family. Things like the un-partitioned toilets, lack of privacy, and overcrowding became emotionally and physically stressful. The stress of everything became too much for the Wakatsukis, and most other families, which explains the riots in the camp and her father’s hostile actions toward her mother.

    The separation between previously happy Japanese-American families were torn apart by the confinement and discriminations of everyday life rather than the war that put them there.

The summary of a real life memoir

    Farewell to Manzanar is an autobiography written by Jeanne Wakatsuki on her time being held in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. The book starts on December 7^th, 1941 in Long Beach California. Her family includes her parents, 4 brothers, 5 sisters, and her grandmother. They are shocked at the news that the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor. In the wake of the news, the FBI arrests her father for supposedly supplying oil to Japanese submarines off shore.

    In February of 1942, Japanese-Americans are forced to evacuate their property and proceed to live in government owned internment camps. As Jeanne’s brother Woody just begins to fill in his father’s shoes as leader, the Wakatsukis are all transported to an internment camp in Owens Valley California, called Manzanar. With a population of over 10,000 internees, the Wakatsukis are miserable and overcrowded. They withstood terrible dust storms, diarrhea, filthy toilets, no privacy, and dull unappetizing foods.

    In September of 1942, her father is finally reunited with his family, but the feeling of humiliation haunts him. The only way for him to escape it is by making homemade rice wine. This soon leads to him becoming an out casted alcoholic. Jeanne becomes engulfed into the chaos that her family creates, but soon escapes by hiding under her bed, going to catechism, playing games, and finding new hobbies like ballet.

    In the spring of 1943, the Wakatsukis locate from the horrid block 16 to a better block 28. Jeannes father develops a better outlook on life by nurturing to his pear trees. Jeanne begins to experience what average school is like by joining clubs like choir and yearbook.

    Things begin to grow even tougher due to riots and mandatory loyalty oaths issued by the government. Woody and most of the younger men go against the older generations wishes and prove their loyalty by signing up for the US military. When the Wakatsukis are finally leaving Manzanar, her father refuses to leave on the bus, so he drives his entire family to Long Beach California in a blue Nash car. They move into an insubstantial housing apartment where her mother works in a fish cannery but her father isn’t able to find a job best suited to his self-esteem.

    By 1951, they move to the Santa Clara Valley where her father begins farming again. Jeanne begins to rebel against her father’s harsh conventionalism by being voted homecoming queen and becoming a majorette. Jeanne became the first of her family to earn a collage degree and she marries a Caucasian man, James D. Houston.

    In April of 1972, 30 years after her internment, Jeanne takes her children to the remnants of Manzanar. Old memories begin to return and a sense of closure begins to wash over the final words in the book.