Through the perspective of the tired young girl on the train, Julie Otsuka conveys how fear and hatred caused by fear isolate the Japanese from the outside world, stripping them of their everyday comforts and their identities. She communicates these ideas through the symbolism of the shades in the passage, representing the barrier that fear often creates. The girl clearly knows that the people on the train are isolated from everyone else by the shades: “There were the people inside the train and the people outside the train and in between them there were the shades”(Otsuka 28). The shades are both a literal and a figurative barrier between the Japanese prisoners and society. On the other hand, the soldier requires them to use the shades because
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She tries to imagine what he would think, showing her characteristically active and busy imagination. She envisions, “He would think, There goes the train, and then he would not think about the train again. He would think of other things. What was for supper, maybe, or who was winning the war.” The Japanese are isolated by the barrier of the shades- they cannot see what is happening outside, and sit silently, forgotten, in the darkness of the train. The everyday comforts that the imaginary man thinks of have been stripped from the Japanese on the train. They do not know if they will even have supper, they will be cut off from news of the outside world, and they will not be able to walk anywhere without being on high alert. Furthermore, they are stripped of who they are; after the train is cast into darkness, the girl “could not see anyone at all and no one outside the train could see her”(Otsuka 29). The blindness in the dark represents the loss of identity on the train- the girl cannot find who she is and instantly becomes identical to everyone else. The naive young girl loses everything on this journey: her identity, her home, her father, and her innocence. Fear can lead to hatred, and sometimes hatred can lead to wounds and scars that will never be
She tries to imagine what he would think, showing her characteristically active and busy imagination. She envisions, “He would think, There goes the train, and then he would not think about the train again. He would think of other things. What was for supper, maybe, or who was winning the war.” The Japanese are isolated by the barrier of the shades- they cannot see what is happening outside, and sit silently, forgotten, in the darkness of the train. The everyday comforts that the imaginary man thinks of have been stripped from the Japanese on the train. They do not know if they will even have supper, they will be cut off from news of the outside world, and they will not be able to walk anywhere without being on high alert. Furthermore, they are stripped of who they are; after the train is cast into darkness, the girl “could not see anyone at all and no one outside the train could see her”(Otsuka 29). The blindness in the dark represents the loss of identity on the train- the girl cannot find who she is and instantly becomes identical to everyone else. The naive young girl loses everything on this journey: her identity, her home, her father, and her innocence. Fear can lead to hatred, and sometimes hatred can lead to wounds and scars that will never be