Racism In 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's'

From the start of the book, the mother creates a tone of acceptance judging by her reactions to the racism that is affecting her. The chapter begins with the mom seeing Evacuation Order NO.19, which says that all people of Japanese descent must relocate to temporary residences. Gathering people from the same nationality/ethnicity is a racist act. The mother, however, does not react emotionally to the sign, rather “she read[s] the sign from top to bottom and then, still squinting she [takes] a pen… she [writes] down a few words… then [turns] around and [goes] home and [begins] to pack”(3). The woman thinks nothing of it, as seen through her lack of adjectives regarding the sign and her lack of emotions. In the way she responds, there is a sense

In the chapter, the father confesses to all that he is blamed for and it immediately starts with him being frustrated: “What more can I tell you? My feet were cold. I was tired. I was thirsty. I was scared. So I did what I had to do. I talked”(140). The father goes through a rant towards the government in frustration, and his use of anaphora, the starting of two sentences with the same phrase, shows his annoyance by restating part of the sentence each time. The last line also evokes the possibility that this is not sincere at all, rather he is saying it out of frustration. He is frustrated that the government believes that all Japanese people are evil. : “ I’m your worst fear-you saw what we did in Manchuria, you remember Nanking, you can’t get Pearl Harbor out of your mind”(143). These are three events that some Japanese people acted a part of mainly displaying their roles as wicked and immoral. He is frustrated how he, a Japanese-American, is blamed for the acts that some people made in Japan. He will not accept the racism and take the blame for something he did not do. The father has a different tone than the rest of his family.The tone is different with each member of the family and this is due to their different