Rhetorical Analysis Of Arrival At Manzanar

In “Arrival at Manzanar”, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston tells the story of her family from Japan, during the Pacific War. In December of 1941, when she was 7 years old, the Pacific War started, and President Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 9066 which gave authority to the War Department to define military areas in the western states and isolate all of the Japanese and the Japanese-Americans. The father of the Wakatsuki family was picked up by the FBI, and the family was moved to the Japanese internment camp by the army. The life in the camp was horrible. The camp didn’t have enough rooms. The quality of their daily supplies, like food and blankets, was inferior. Houston writes “Arrival at Manzanar” to inform people about the seriousness of

She usually used pathos, one of the rhetorical strategies. I felt bad for how Houston, a little girl suffered, and the work her family did to protect themselves from the hard circumstances. For example, when their family was moved by the army, her mother couldn’t take all of her things, and a dealer tried to buy them at a very cheap price. Her mother didn’t reply to the dealer. Houston describes this situation, “Mama’s nerves were shot, and now Navy jeeps were patrolling the streets. She didn’t say another word. She just glared at this man, all the rage and frustration channeled at him through her eyes. Mama took out another dinner plate and hurled it at the floor; then another and another, never moving, never opening her mouth, just quivering and glaring at the retreating dealer, with tears streaming down her cheeks”(677). Houston also suffered from the moving, tired of getting used to new schools. She says, “In Ocean Park my teacher felt cold and distant. I was confused by all the moving and was having trouble with the classwork, but she would never help me out. She would have nothing to do with me. This was the first time I had felt outright hostility from a Caucasian” (Houston