The Buddha in the Attic, written by Julie Otsuka, is stated by the San Francisco Chronicle to be “An understated masterpiece… that unfolds with great emotional power… destined to endure” (San Francisco Chronicle). This “masterpiece” of a novel is written in the first-person plural voice to aid in disclosing the dismal lives of various Japanese picture brides. These brides travel to America in hopes to find an advanced life, in comparison to the ones they were living in Japan. Otsuka provides the perspective of both the Japanese picture brides and their neighbors and friends who have known them for the years following their arrival to the states. Through these contrasting perspectives presented in the last three chapters of the book, Otsuka’s,…show more content… This understanding of marrying in America incorporated the notion that, “women did not have to work in the fields and there was plenty of rice and firewood for all” (Otsuka 7). Contradictory to their preconception, they immediately became farmhands just as they would have if they had stayed in Japanese culture. Every woman in this novel is meticulously represented through their own individual lens, but there is not one of these brides who is characterized in their fullest within the novel. Speaking in plural first-person, the perspective of the Japanese picture brides was provided for the majority of the book as they gave firsthand accounts of how they arrived in the United Stated and their treatment while in the United States. The narrator delivers the story as if each individual experienced every event. The author uses repetition in telling specific aspects of their journey, making it seem as if they are one of the same, “we” represented the whole or every individual bride traveling on the boat to America. Using first-person plural narration this way allowed Otsuka…show more content… Up until this point of the book the picture brides’ experiences have been expressed as a collection, but now there are specific names that are said in order to make a more intimate relationship with the characters as they experience a change in their communities and in their safety due to the war. Fear becomes evident as Japanese men leave for work and do not return. “Chizuko, who ran the kitchen at the Kearney Ranch and always like to be prepared—packed a small suitcase for her husband and left it beside their front door” (Otsuka, 83). Another example of this is when Otsuka writes “Hitomo, who had worked as a house-keeper at the Prince estate for more than ten years, was held at gunpoint in broad daylight as she was heading back into town” (84). Rather than the picture brides as a whole experiencing this, only one is held at gunpoint letting the reader know that these aren’t just any women who are experiencing these acts of violence, but they are real people with jobs and families to feed. In this chapter the brides start to become cared for more as they become real people with names. Even more so in the next chapter, called “Last Day” where their lives become even more personable and real to the Americans. Especially when Otsuka talks of Masayo who “left after saying good-bye to her youngest son, Masamichi, at the hospital in
