Rosa

Why does Rosa refuse to admit that Magda is dead? Explore the many possibilities here.                          

                                      “She was ashamed; she felt exposed” (pg46) 

         I believe Rosa refuses to understand the reality that Magda is dead because she is mentally sick in the head. She was so traumatized that she continues to dwell on the act that at the time in the holocaust she couldn’t help Magda, she even contemplated running out of line to pass off Magda to a stranger but she was unsure if the person would accept her baby and also there was a good possibility that she could have been shot. Rosa continues to self-inflict herself by having negative thoughts about Stella, her shop, and random people. Rosa punishes herself for being alive, she choices to live in poverty, to be angry, and isolate herself from people that want to help her but gave up.

        “Property misleads, brings false perspectives. The power to smash her own. A kind of suicide. She had murdered her store with her own hands. “ (pg46)

     Some people believe that it is healthy for a person to grieve over a loss of a loved one but to a certain extent of time. Rosa is consumed with grief! A person is only as sick as their secrets. She needs to realize that it is not 1940 and what has been done is permanent, and she is no longer controlled by Hitler but she’s a hostage of her own thoughts.

    It seems that Rosa can’t be fazed by anything that horrendous then the death of Magda. Rosa is slowly killing herself over something that she couldn’t control and now the only thing she has control over is her perception of what her life has come to. I have a hard time understanding why Rosa acts the way she does, but then again I have never been in her position.  

The Unamed Boy

     Out of the family I believe the boy is the only who survived physically and mentally. Even though he was the youngest one he thought very mature for his age, he didn’t isolate himself like the mother or act immature like his sister. He developed a clear sense of reality, observing the mother and sister’s behavior changing as time passed by. It was clear that the boy was the outlet for the mother and sister who vent to him for emotional support. I feel that they both did that because he was so young that he wouldn’t judge or critique them. He took on the role of his father lending guidance and reinsurance.

   The boy mentally grew stronger by being positive and optimistic throughout the time in the camp, never getting caught up in the shame, guilt, or hate. He kept reminding himself of who he was and where he came from, for instance, “One evening, before he went to bed, he wrote his name in the dust across the top of the table. All through the night, while he slept, more dust blew through the walls. By morning his name was gone.” (pg64) Even though his name was gone there was a sense of existence. Otsuka illustrating that scene really made me want to know the name of the boy, and just like the Japanese Internment Camps it was left unsaid.

The Lost Pearl

In the chapter When the Emperor was Divine, the mother emotionally fell apart in the beginning she presented herself as a strong unemotional mother making sure that her children were safe and even taking on the role of her husband hauling around heavy buckets of water. She continued her everyday routine of cooking, cleaning, and lying.

Her once hard shell was slowly cracking each day but I believe the night when her husband was taken was the night was the end of her life, and the beginning of her new life having to portray this unemotional women being forced to hold it together for the sake of the kids. We learn that she had destroyed her personal belongings, burning family photos and her silk kimonos; she slowly erased her cultural-identity and Americanized herself and the kids.

The pearl earring was what caught my attention; I interpreted the missing pearl earring as a symbol of the absent husband. The way she randomly turns to her son and says, “I lost an earring on the train. Did I ever tell you that?” (pg87) She nonchalantly expresses to the boy how she hasn’t felt the right ever since, and for a moment wonders where the earring is. I believe this was a way for her to open up out loud without having to say what she was really missing, her husband.

The mother repressed regret the night of the arrest, she opens up to her son again about how the father asked her if she would get a glass of water, telling him to get it himself. She relives their last moments in her dreams picturing him searching for a glass of water. I can relate to the feeling of “if I only had but I just didn’t moment”, which can be very taunting. This once strong mother is on a path of destruction and it’s only a matter of time until she surrenders.   

PUSH

Who Failed Precious?

It is easy to say that everyone failed Precious.

1)      Her mother. She developed jealousy and envied Precious because her “man” Precious’s father was giving her more sexual attention than the mother which she took that sexual acts as love and affection something that she was receiving lack of. As sick as that is the mother despised Precious for something that wasn’t controllable.  Precious wasn’t able to control the way her father abused her, her mother COULD have changed the situation by realizing the sickness of his acts instead of seeing it as another women from the streets stealing her man.

2)      Her grandmother. Precious’s grandmother was aware of the sexual and violent abuse that was occurring in the house hold but she failed to take Precious out of there because she was afraid of the mother and the father, she just didn’t want to be involved in the situation maybe because she has dealt with too much in her lifetime.

3)      The community as a whole were aware of the abuse that was happening it was like the bystander affect. The people in the apartment heard the fighting and one neighbor even made a commit saying, “We know she didn’t take your man” but didn’t report it to authorities of the sexual abuse from her father. The EMT failed her because when she wrote down the name of the father the nurse didn’t account that this is possible the second time her pregnancy was from her father again.