Throughout the course of a novel, complex characters change due to their experiences in the novel.For instance, in the novel When the Emperor was Divine, the daughter is a complex character that goes through changes throughout the novel. She used to be a young girl who was very dramatic tried to act more mature and adult-like, but was really a little girl on the inside. She used to always value her family and spend a lot of time with them. However, toward the end of the novel, she reaches adolescence. She starts to spend less time with her family and more time with her friends. She becomes more independent. She even picks up the habit of smoking because of this. Textual evidence to support this is on page 92. It states," His sister left the barracks early in the morning and did not return until long after dark. She was always in a rush now. "Where are you going?" "Out." She ate all her meals with her friends. Never with the boy or his mother. She smoked cigarettes. He could smell them in her hair. As you can see, this quote proves that the daughter went through drastic changes. She valued her family less throughout the course of the story, and became more independent. Complex characters also interact with other characters differently throughout the course of the story as well. As i have mentioned, the daughter in the novel used to be with her family all they time. She ate meals with them, and bonded with both her mother and her brother frequently. Toward the end of the story, the daughter barely even interacts with her family at all. Textual evidence on page 92 states," One day he saw her standing in line at the mess hall in her Panama hate and she hardly seemed to recognize him at all." This quote shows that the daughter barely interacts with her family at all, because this quote describes a time in which the daughter does not even acknowledge her brother when he sees her in line at the mess hall. This shows a drastic difference in the daughter's interaction with her family in the beginning and ending of the novel. Finally, complex characters advance plot. The daughter in the novel advances plot, because her change in personality and interactions exaggerate how the experiences of the internment camps can affect people. The author was trying to show that the internment camps affected people in bad ways. This was a very important part of the plot, and the change in the daughter's actions helped explain this.
The article is about how Julie Otsuka came up with the idea to write the novel, When the Emperor was Divine. The article shares that Julie Otsuka did not write the novel for political reasons, but just to understand what her mother went through during the hard times in internment camps. The article also shares how much to her surprise, Julie Otsuka's novel became a big hit in colleges and the United States itself, because of how relatable the topic can be to all religions and races.