Week 5 Question #9

9. What is the effect of using a fourteen-year-old girl as the narrator in “In Response to Executive Order 9066”? In terms of impact, how does this differ than it might with her father as the narrative voice?

If the father would have been chosen as the narrative voice in the poem “In Response to Executive Order 9066” by Dwight Okita, I think the poem would have had a significantly greater emotional impact. The daughter is a teenager and the reason for the move the family is about to make is not something she can, at her age, fully understand the significance of. The daughter’s perspective is matter of fact. Her heritage is Japanese and she was raised to conform to her elder’s wishes. She was raised in America and she is an American in her mind. This fact is portrayed to us by the author who he tells us through a metaphor in the daughter’s letter to the authorities when she writes “I have always felt funny using chopsticks and my favorite food is hot dogs.” (Lines 8-9). Her attitude is one of what must be, will be. Through the father’s perspective we would have felt his pain as an observer watching the pain that the daughter’s heritage was causing her. His daughter was being shunned “She was sitting on the other side of the room.” (Line 17). In his voice we would hear him mourn for his daughter the loss of her friend, her home, and the only life she had ever known. He would share his pains of guilt with us as he shared memories of times spent with his daughter growing up and his wondering if they would ever be able to make new memories worth keeping again. The father’s voice would have evoked sympathy.