As a psychology major, I took great interest in the concept of the “authoritarian personality.” It was conceived of by a group of social scientists at Berkeley. Their goal was to explain the personality (and its origins) that predisposes one to fascist beliefs and actions. Their motivation was to explain the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust, but the theory surrounding the personality theory can be applied to many situations. While it has been heavily criticized and partially debunked in their explanations for why the personality forms, the key components of the personality theory – the focus on an ingroup, the projecting of undesirable traits to an outgroup, and general xenophobia – still apply. When I wrote my senior paper on the Authoritarian personality, I used the theory to explain Executive Order 9066 and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. As I read Farewell to Manzanar, I could not help but be reminded of this theory.
However, as I read the book, my focus shifted towards something that is not usually paid attention to – the authoritarian personality is usually used to describe the oppressor. After all, the oppressor holds the authority, so authoritarianism becomes apparent on a wide scale. But as I gain a close perspective of the microcosms within the oppressed minority groups, the same traits emerge. Throughout the memoir, authoritarian traits emerge from the Japanese characters, especially Jeanne's father. This is seen repeatedly in his resistance to her baptism, his views on sexuality and dress, his emphasis on tradition. Combined with the anti-American sentiment of the Japanese men and what could be perceived as paranoia concerned with helping the Americans, these authoritarian traits are seen throughout the book, even in the oppressed characters. And to me, as a reader, that makes it real.
Too often, historical stories – memoir, nonfiction, and historical fiction – make the characters too unreal. The events are often depicted as cartoons: there is a definitive good guy and bad guy. One person or group is the evil oppressor and the other is the saintly victim. While it is clear in the book that the U.S. government was oppressive, the interned Japanese were not always likable. When the narrator elicits sympathy for the interned, she does this through a sense of injustice rather than through depicting a cartoonish, puppy-dog innocence of all those who have been oppressed.
I genuinely enjoyed this book. The internment of Japanese immigrants is often a lost chapter in American history. Even those who acknowledge it often cast the significance aside by comparing it to the Holocaust that was occurring at the same time. I would definitely consider using this book in my classroom. I think it is very important to make sure events like this are not forgotten, and to recognize the moral ambiguity in actions taken by our own country.
Your indepth overview of that psychology theory is very intriguing, it is quite interesting and compelling to see how the story displaced it. The whole idea of the oppressed oppressing others has always been extremely paradoxical for me. When you would teach this, would you focus on that power structure of within the family or more so on the historical period?
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