Papa's Life End At Manzanar Analysis

In chapter 22, when Jeanne Wakatsuki is reflecting on her experience at Manzanar, she states, “Papa’s life ended at Manzanar… Until this trip I had not been able to admit that my own life really began there” (150). What Jeanne means when she says this is open for interpretation; some may say that her view of the experience changes over time as she matures and begins to think differently about it and finally she is able to make this statement, contrary to her words that Papa and his life are done for at Manzanar. This evidence is from the point of view of Jeanne thirty years after her internment. She is now far enough away from the experience that she can fully reflect on it at a point where she is looking at it in the big picture; her entire life and her family’s entire life. For example, in chapter 13, she says, “... that ache I’d felt since soon after we arrived at Manzanar” (80). Jeanne is saying, at this point in her life, that the experience at …show more content…
Much more than a remembered place, it had become a state of mind. Now, having seen it, I no longer wanted it to lose it or to have those years erased” (151).
At this point, Jeanne is relieved of the burden Manzanar imposed upon her. She is proud that the internment happened to her, ambiguous and unexpected as that may be; and though she is not completely happy with the event, she finds that the camp is tolerable, even welcomed in her mind. Manzanar changed Jeanne forever. It even changed her after the camp was over. Within her mind she had thought of herself as lowly and unbelonging as the time she had been placed in the camp. This feeling of loneliness changed itself after her return to Manzanar as a more mature person. The fact that Jeanne was able to cope with such an event and make it welcomed make it so that any event is tolerable after a certain amount of time. What may seem as an unforgettable event can surely turn out to be