Why do you think that Ozick chose to include such a small segment of story representing the Holocaust experience compared to a much longer, drawn out version of Rosa's life in Florida? How does the form here mirror the content?

I think that Ozick chose to format the two sections this way in order to simulate real life. In all actuality, the holocaust only lasted about four years, which when compared to the length of a human life span wasn't a huge chunk of time. I mean, think about it, 4 years out of 80 is only 5% of someone's life. So when she wrote the first section of the book, she wanted to reflect that the holocaust was really only the blink of an eye. It also shows how quickly the holocaust came and went. People were living normal lives, and in the span of only four years they had their possessions, their humanity, their families, everything stripped away from them. In the span of only four years. That’s extremely powerful. It’s also frightening that the Nazi party was able to commit such atrocities, and that they condensed it into such a small time frame.

I think Ozick decided to make the story about Rosa’s life after the holocaust so much longer because in all actuality, the rest of her life in years vastly outnumbers the years she spent in the camps. It also reflects the fact that even though she escaped from the camps, she is still in some ways living through it, every day in her life after the holocaust. It shows that all people, after surviving a tragic event have a difficult time readapting to everyday life. They have post traumatic stress disorder and other mental problems. Just because they physically survived the event doesn’t meant that they are mentally all still there.

 I think it is a very tragic story to ponder on, the fact that Rosa was so strong, and so determined to survive, and when she does she ends up emotionally and mentally broken. The fact that she ends up with a successful business and yet she won’t allow herself to forget what happened to her during her short time in the holocaust camps. It’s also sad that she resents Stella for being able to move on with her life during the aftermath of the situation.  However, I believe that Stella must also be suffering similar hardships. While she is dealing with the pain of the memories much better, I think she still must have flashbacks like Rosa, I’m sure she still has nightmares about what happened. I think that it isn’t fair of Rosa to assume that because Stella has been able to create a new life for herself, that she has completely forgotten what happened to them back in Europe.

When The Emperor Was Divine

After reading When the Emperor Was Divine, I was left with many unanswered questions. Why did the author choose to leave the characters nameless? What actually happened to the father while he was in jail? Was it really necessary to kill White Dog? Why doesn’t the mother tell the children what’s actually going on? I read the book a second time, and then a third time, and still the answers to these questions both eluded me and smacked me in the face.

Why are the characters nameless? Because the family is supposed to represent an entire nameless community. Because the family is supposed to represent thousands of nameless individuals that were shipped off to internment camps at the request of the United States Government. Because the family was slowly stripped of its identity, slowly stripped of what makes it unique, slowly stripped of what makes it personal.

Why did the mother kill White Dog? Why did she let the bird go? Was it an act of compassion? Of desperation?  She killed the dog in order to be compassionate. She didn’t want the dog to suffer. She didn’t want her children to worry about the dog. She didn’t want to worry about the dog. She let the bird go so he could be free. She let the bird go so that he could fly away and take care of himself. She had to tie up loose ends and make sure everything was taken care of before she left for the train.

 After reading this novel, there were too many unanswered questions. Too many hidden meanings withing the subtle details of the paragraphs. There were too many ways to interpret events and yet not enough definitive proof. 

I definitely enjoyed the writing style.