THE ENEMY, PEARL S. BUCK

Class 12 VISTA Ch-4

THE ENEMYPEARL S. BUCK

By- Nupur Nayak B.A.(hons.) History 1st Year student, Miranda House, DU

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3- Characters

2- Synopsis

1- Author

index

4- Images

5- Questions

1. author - pearl s. buck

The chapter "The Enemy" has been written by Pearl S. Buck. She was born on June 26, 1892. She was also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu. She was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries to China, and later as a missionary herself, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang. "The Good Earth" a novel written by her, was the best selling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, Buck won the Nobel prize in literature "for her rich and truly epic description of peasant life in China", she was the first American woman to win the prize.

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Unit

synopsis

summARY

Although Sadao was in no mind to help the enemy, he takes in the young soldier and provides him with medical assistance. He keeps him at his house to avert any danger coming his way. However, he knew he has opened doors to danger by helping the enemy. His servants decide to leave Sadao too. As the days kept passing, the soldier was now beginning to gain his health back. Now that the soldier was no longer Sadao’s patient, he decides to kill him off in his sleep. He informs the General of the American and thus the General reciprocates. They decide to send private assassins to kill the American soldier.

While waiting for the assassins, Sadao starts noticing it was delaying. However, during this course, humanity in Sadao arises. He realizes that he is a human being at the end of the day. He now recognizes the value of human life as well as universal brotherhood. Thus, this opens his mind which was limited to race, boundaries, and wars. Finally, he comes to the conclusion that the American soldier is not his enemy just because he belongs to another country. Thus, he rises above his prejudices and does the right thing by helping the American soldier escape, thus saving his life.

The Enemy is a story written by Pearl Sydenstricker Buck. It is about a Japanese surgeon, Sadao. He went to study in America and meets a Japanese girl, Hana, there. He marries her and brings her back to Japan to settle down. This was the time of World War II. Thus, all the doctors were called upon to serve the Japanese army. However, they allowed Sadao to stay back. It was because he was tending to the old General who was on his death bed. However, one night, an incident changes his life. He encounters an American Navy-man who is injured by a gun-shot and dying.

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To sum up, The Enemy summary, we learn how love and compassion can make us better human beings as opposed to prejudices and biases against other people with whom we do not share anything but the bond of being humans.

03

main characters of the story

dr. sadao hoki

The Japanese Doctor

Sadao is a skilled surgeon and scientist, happily married to Hana, father to two children, and a loyal Japanese citizen. He does not fight in the war because his medical services are needed for the General, so he is home when a wounded American prisoner of war shows up on the beach near his home. Though his first inclination is to let the man die, not wanting to offer aid and comfort to the enemy nor to be punished, his training takes over and he successfully operates on the young man, saving his life. While he does not waver in his ambivalence toward the man, constantly wondering why he acts as he does, he remains committed to his profession's expectations and ethics.

hana (sadao's wife)

Sadao's Wife

Hana is an intelligent, steadfast woman, wife to Sadao, and mother to their two children. She spent time in America as well, which is where she met Sadao. She is pure-blooded Japanese, which Sadao wanted in a wife. She has a moral compass like Sadao's, meaning she ultimately knows it is best to treat the enemy even though she does not have to like him or help him beyond measure.

tom

The American Soldier

Tom is the "man," the "boy," the "American," and the "prisoner," among other things. He is an escaped prisoner of war, found on the beach with a gunshot wound worsened by the rocks of the sea that he tried to navigate in his escape. Sadao finds him "common" in appearance, and he is probably about 17-20 years old. Upon his waking, he thanks the doctor but expresses casual racism in his remarks, using the slur "Jap" and evincing a simplistic worldview about the war. He is grateful for Sadao saving his life more than once, though, and follows the doctor's directions about how to escape.

the general

General Takima

The General is an older military official whom Sadao is treating for a serious disease. The General is weary of the obligations of his job but relishes his power. He needs Sadao to treat him and keep him alive, so he is not angry when Sadao confesses that he has the American prisoner with him. He promises to send assassins to take care of the matter but forgets to do so, as he is consumed with his illness. When Sadao confesses tells him the prisoner escaped, the General agrees to keep his secret because exposing Sadao would result in the only physician he trusts to keep him alive being punished.

yumi

The Servant

Yumi is the children's nurse. She loves them and seems like a good servant, but she is simple-minded and stubborn. She is opposed to the American's presence in the home and quits with the other servants, though she returns once the American is gone.

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sadao's father

A Strict Father

Though he is not alive during the events of the story, Sadao thinks of his father often. The man was elegant, exacting, and stern, and he wanted his son to be successful. He also was very nationalistic, only wanting his son to marry a Japanese woman and requesting for everything in his room to be Japanese in style and make.

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Unit

images/pictures

images

SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE CHAPTER ''THE ENEMY''

JAPAN AND AMERICA DURING THE WORLD WAR

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JAPANESE COAST

''Sadao had his house beside the Japanese Coast''

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An Old Traditional Japanese House

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Japanese Traditional Wedding

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A Traditional Japanese Family

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The Interior of a Traditional Japanese House

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Traditional Japanese Bedding

Futon is the Japanese traditional style of bedding.

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Japanese Assassins

NINJA A class of 14th century Japanese who were trained in martial arts and were hired for espionage(spying) and assassinations.

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A Japanese Boat

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Japanese kimono and haori

The kimono, literally meaning 'thing to wear' is a traditional Japanese garment and national dress of Japan.

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Unit

QUESTION AND ANSWERS

Questions

q/a

EVEN TRY TO ANSWER THE QUESTION ON YOUR OWN !!!

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Q/A

Q3. Will Hana help the wounded man and wash him herself?

Q2. Will Dr Sadao be arrested on the charge of harbouring an enemy?

Q1. Who was Dr Sadao? Where was his house?

Dr Sadao Hoki was an eminent Japanese surgeon and scientist. He had spent eight valuable years of his youth in America to learn all that could be learnt of surgery and medicine there. He was perfecting a discovery which would render wounds entirely clean. Dr Sadao’s house was built on rocks well above a narrow beach that was outlined with bent pines. It was on a spot of the Japanese coast.

The gardener and the cook were frightened that their master was going to heal the wound of a white man—an enemy. They felt that after being cured he (the white man) will take revenge on the Japanese. Yumi, the maid, was also frightened. She refused to wash the white man. Hana rebuked the maid who had refused to wash a wounded helpless man. Then she dipped a small dean towel into the steaming hot water and washed the white man’s face. She kept on washing him until his upper body was quite dean. But she dared not turn him over.

Dr Sadao knew that they would be arrested if they sheltered a white man in their house. The wounded man was a prisoner of war who had escaped with a bullet on his back. Since Japan was at war with America, harbouring an enemy meant being a traitor to Japan. Dr Sadao could be arrested if anyone complained against him and accused him of harbouring an enemy.

Q/A

Q5. Will Dr Sadao be arrested on the charge of harbouring an enemy?

Q4. What will Dr Sadao and his wife do with the man?

Dr Sadao and his wife, Hana, had told the servants that they only wanted to bring the man to his senses so that they could turn him over as a prisoner. They knew that the best possible course under the circumstances was to put him back into the sea. However, Dr Sadao was against handing over a wounded man to the police. He dedded to carry him into his house. He operated upon him and extracted the bullet from his body. He kept the white man in his house. He and his wife looked after him and fed him till he was strong enough to walk on his legs. .

It was the seventh day since Dr Sadao had operated upon the young white man. Early that morning, their three servants left together. In the afternoon, a messenger came there in official uniform. He told Dr Sadao that he had to come to the palace at once as the old General was in pain again. Hana, who had thought that the officer had come to arrest Dr Sadao, asked the messenger, “Is that all?” The baffled messenger enquired if that was not enough. She tried to cover her mistake by expressing regret and admitted that the General’s illness was enough. Dr Sadao told the General about the white man he had operated upon. Since Dr Sadao was indispensable to the General, he promised that Dr Sadao would not be arrested.

Q/A

Q6. What will Dr Sadao do to get rid of the man?

Dr Sadao had told the old General that he had operated upon a white man. The General promised to send his private assassins to kill the man silently and secretly at night and remove his body. Dr Sadao left the outer partition of white man’s room open. He waited anxiously for three nights. The servants had left their house. His wife Hana had to cook, clean the house and serve the wounded man. She was unaccustomed to this labour. She was anxious that they should get rid of the man. Dr Sadao told Tom, the white man, that he was quite well then. He offered to put his boat on the shore that night. It would have food and extra clothing in it. Tom might be able to row to the little island which was not far from the coast. It had not been fortified. The .water was quite deep. Nobody lived there, as it was submerged in storm. Since it was not the season of storm, he could live there till he saw a Korean fishing boat pass by. He gave the man his flashlight. He was to signal twice with his flashlight at sunset in case his food ran out. In case, he was still there and all right, he was to signal only once. Dr Sadao gave the man Japanese clothes and covered his blond head with a black doth. In short, Dr Sadao helped the man to escape from Japan. At the same time he also got rid of the man.

Q/A

Q1. There are moments in life when we have to make hard choices between our roles as private individuals and as citizens with a sense of national loyalty? Discuss with reference to the story you have just read.

Q2. Dr Sadao was compelled by his duty as a doctor to help the enemy soldier. What made Hana, his wife, sympathetic to him in the face of open defiance from the domestic staff?

Q4. What explains the attitude of the General in the matter of the enemy soldier? Was it human consideration, lack of national loyalty, dereliction of duty or simply self-absorption?

Q3. How would you explain the reluctance of the soldier to leave the shelter of the doctor’s home even when he knew he couldn’t stay there without risk to the doctor and himself?

Q/A

Q5. While hatred against a member of the enemy race is justifiable, especially during wartime, what makes a human being rise above narrow prejudices?

Q6. Do you think the doctor’s final solution to the problem was the best possible one in the circumstances?

Q7. Does the story remind you of ‘Birth’ by A. J. Cronin that you read in ‘Snapshots’ last year? What are the similarities?

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