"When the Emperor Was Divine" - Quotation Collection - The Woman

[Robin Nourie]

The woman asks the boy, "Did I leave the porch light on or off" and "Did I remember to turn off the stove...Did we even have a stove?" These are signs of both the disorientating effects of internment as well as her feeling more and more disconnected from her past.  Later when the boy assures her that of course they had a stove. She remembers that she was "quite the cook, once."  Here again she is feeling separated from her past self, as if she is no longer the same woman.

[Sookeun Jung]

"What allegiance?" asked the boy's mother. She said she had nothing to forswear. She'd been in America for almost twenty years now. But she did not want to cause any trouble-"the nail that sticks up get's hammered down" -or be labeled disloyal. She did not want to be sent back to Japan. "There's no future for us there. We're here. Your father's here. The most important thing is that we stay together." She answered yes. They stayed. Loyalty. Disloyalty. Allegiance. Obedience. "Words," she said, "it's all just words." (99)

the woman is most intent on surviving and keeping her family as together as possible.

[Sookeun Jung]

"But now we watched as she pulled the chain up over her head-she did this effortlessly, naturally, as though it were something she did every day-and she slid the key into the lock. Her hands steady. Her fingers did not tremble." (108)

it's almost as if the woman had practiced and prepared for this. in ways she is returning to her past life

[Talya Laver]

"Sometimes," said his mother, "I'll look up at the clock and it's half past five and I'm sure that he's on his way home from the office. And then I'll start to panic. 'It's late,' I'll think to myself. 'Ishould have started the rice by now.'"

[Talya Laver]

SHe sat by the stove for hours, not talking. In her lap lay a half-finished letter. An unopened book. SHe wore a thick woolen scarf around her head to keep in the heat. A pair of baggy trousers. A heavy sweater. When the dinner bell rang she sat up with a start. "What is that?' she asked. "Who's there?" In her min there were always men at the door. We just need to ask you husband a few questions. She would stare down at her hands in her lap, as though suprised to find them still here. "Sometimes I don't know if I'm awake or asleep." "You're awake," the boy would tell her.

[Carley]

His mother said it aged you.  Th sun.  She said it made you grow old.  Every night before she went to bed she daubed cream on her face.  She rationed it out as though it were butter.  Or sugar.  It was Pond's.  She'd bought a large jar at the pharmacy the day before they had left Berkeley.  "Got to make it last," she said.  But already she had almost used it all up.  "I should have bought two."

[Carley]

They did not plan on spending so long there, or if they did, are slightly denial about it.

[Carley]

"Or maybe," she said, "it's just gone.  Sometimes things disappear and there's no getting them back.  That's just how it is."

There lives are gone, and if they ever get them back, or their father/husband back, things will never be the same.

[Carley]

"When I first met your father I wanted to be with him all the time...If I was away from him for even five minutes, I'd start to miss him.  I'd think, He's never coming back.  I'll never see him again.  But after a while I stopped being so afraid.  Things change."

Things have come full circle.  Her fears might come true, at this point in the story.

[Carley]

Once in a while someone would stop and ask our mother where we had been-"Haven't seen you for a while," that person might say, or "It's been ages"- and our mother simply lifted her head and smiled and replied, "Oh, away."

She holds her head high, still has class.

[caroline caraballo]

She wore a shapeless black dress, sensible shoes, no lipstick.  In a large brown shopping bag she carried an assortment of brushes and rags.     (136)

 

The key had become part of her. It was always there, a small, dark shape, dangling-visibly and sometimes invisibly, depending on the light and what she was wearing, and even, at times, it seemed, on her mood-just beneath the surface of her clothes. If she took it off, surely terrible things would happen. (107)

[Sookeun Jung]

"She put down the bottle and waited for the laughter to stop but it would not, it kept on coming until finally the tears were running down her cheeks. She picked up the bottle again and drank. The wine was dark and sweet. She had made it herself last fall. She took out her handkerchief and wiped her mouth. Her lips left a dark stain on the cloth. She put the cork back into the bottle and pushed it as far in as it would go."La donna e mobile", she sang to herself as she went down the stairs to the basement. She hid the bottle behind the rusted furnace where no one would ever find it."

the beginning of the woman's depression

[Sookeun Jung]

(20)

[Sookeun Jung]

"She lifted it high in the air with both hands and brought the blade down swiftly on his head. White Dog's body shuddered twice and his hind legs kicked out into the air, as if he were trying to run. Then he grew still....The shovel had been the right choice. Better, she thought, than a hammer...She pulled off her white gloves and looked at them. They were no longer white. She dropped them into the hole and picked up the shovel again. She filled up the hole." 

the ceremonious execution of white dog

[Carley]

"She turned around and squinted at him over the top of her glasses.  'Thank you,' she said.  'Thank you, Joe.'  Then the door slammed behind her and she was alone on the sidewalk and she realized that in all the years she had been going to Joe Lundy's store she had never before called him by his name.  Joe.  It sounded strange to her.  Wrong, almost.  But she had said it.  She had said it out loud.  She wished she had said it earlier."-pg 6

Only now, as she is about to lose her identity, does she give one to the hardware store owner that she has known for years.

"She stood in front of the mirror tracing the lines along her forehead and neck with her finger.  'Is it the light,' she asked, 'or are there bags under my eyes?'

      'There's bags..'

       She pointed to a wrinkle by her mouth.  'See this?'

        He nodded.

       'A recent development.  Your father won't know who I am.'"-pg 63

The woman has been aged by this experience.