Emiko was raised Japanese and in the Japanese culture it is important to show greater respect to the eldest members of a family. When she lived with her parents in Hiroshima, Emiko's brother and mother and her all respected her father. “ Outside the home she [Emiko's mother] obeyed my father, as tradition dictated.” (Bock 24) Emiko is under the constant pressure to please those, she was taught, to be elders. Even after her parents are killed, Emiko still has to obey her grandfather. After the bomb exploded, and Emiko was disfigured, she was made fun of horribly. After living for ten years with a face like that, “ no one could look at the scars on my face without being overcome with revulsion. At the time I hated my grandfather for saying that. I also knew he was right.” (110) Emiko only went to America because it was what her grandfather wished, even though she had a fear of going by herself to get her face fixed and being killed in the process. Her grandfather said to her “ Do you think your parents and your brother would know you now with a face like that?” (112) Emiko knew what had to be done, and she was going to go through with it even if she had to confront the fear of facing the men who killed her family. Both Sophie and Emiko grew up in a patriarchal society, because both significant male roles making them feel obligated to go on a journey by themselves to better their own living conditions. Even though both of them had male figures who dictated what they should do, in their own countries, going to America still held problems with the male sex.
When Sophie came to America, her entrance to Cuba was denied forcing her into a refugee camp outside Montreal. Sophie knew that she had to get out of there due to the fear of being alone and all the horrors she had seen on the way. When Anton came to the camp, she saw this as her way out. Sophie brought Anton out to the river and asked him, “Can you get me out?” (150) When Anton told her there was no way for him to rescue her out of the camp, Sophie resorted to using her sexuality to get her out. She seduced Anton, “I came out here tonight,” she said,” thinking I'd do whatever you wanted with me. I thought you'd take me away.”(152) Whatever Sophie did that night worked. “ You could come with me to America.” (153) Anton said. By using her own body, Sophie rescued herself. She brought herself out of the camp that was run by males to a better place by giving herself to one of the strongest men in the camp. Sophie used Anton, a male in a place of power, for her own need. If Anton had not come, then it would have been much more difficult to get herself out.
Sophie also used men to take away her loneliness. When Anton had come back from Japan after the bombing, “he'd barely touched her since his return.” (65). As a result of Anton not fully satisfying Sophie, she turned to another man, Stefano, to fulfill need of companionship, thus using men to get what she wanted. Sophie used Anton to get her out of the refugee camp resulting in a dysfunctional relationship for the rest of her life. She also used Stefano to take away her loneliness when Anton was ignoring her, resulting in a lifetime of guilt.
Emiko, on the other hand, came to America in the belief that she made her life for herself. She believed that it was her that motivated herself to learn the language, to go to school, to make her life her own. As she grew up and formed a relationship with Anton, she learned her life was not a result of the hard work and dedication she had put into it, but Antons way of giving back what he had taken away. It was
“[Antons] opportunity to give something back. So much had been taken from you. I needed to help you in any way I could. Only a small gesture, a moment of grace, You would deny me that? You would have been left back there, don;t you see? Your life would have been different. You would have been horribly scarred. Still that little girl. Forever that little girl.” ( 262)
Emiko responded with “ You kidnapped my life.” (262) For her whole life, Emiko was trying to prove that she didn't need a man to help her with it, but in the end, she realized, that her entire existence in America was because of Anton. When she was fifteen, she was scared of her life being taken away by Americans, and when she would see her family again, they would “ blindly walk past, unable to see their daughter, his sister, with her new American face.” (112) Emiko tried so hard not to fit in with the American life style, to be her own person. When she found out that her whole life was planned out by an American, and even worse, one of the men who killed her family, she came to the conclusion that her life wasn't hers. Her life was what Anton did to make himself feel better. Emiko thought that she rose up above the American ideals and was dominant for her own life, when really, it was Anton, a male, who had made it possible for her. It made it seem this life was like an illusion, and “ this illusion, too, was gone.” (281) Emiko's life, which she thought was hers, was really just someone else's. She had lost her family, her face, her grandfather, and she couldn't even call her life hers because of the society that made it seem that women couldn't make it on their own.
Although both woman have proven to grow up very different places, as Sophie requires a constant reliance on Anton through him through pulling her out of the refugee camp, caring for her when she has lupus by drawing her baths or rubbing the ointment on her. Emiko, however, grew up with the loss of her family. Even though she was sent through life with the taunting of other children and having to be the one to care for her grandfather instead of her being cared for, she still came to America by herself and makes her own life with documentary's. Sophie had kept her entire past silent, speaking of the loss of her family silent, and hidden and Emiko goes out and put her past on film. Sophie remained her entire life in the care of Anton, not facing the repercussions of her life. Then there is Emiko, who grew up to hate the men who killed her family and her spirit but in the end, comes to terms with it and discovers, it was the same enemy who destroyed her life, but also saved it.
As Sophie and Emiko keep their differences, there are underlying similarities. First, are the physical scars marked upon both of their bodies. Sophie, because of her lupus and need for a kidney transplant (226), was covered in “ old scars and the occasional new rash that cast a shadow over her skin as if clouds were drifting over their heads” (229). Emiko's “left eye had been sealed over with scar tissue and pus”(28). Second, there are the emotional scars. Sophie's emotional scar comes from her affair with Stefano that still taunts her ten years later. Yet, “ she had managed this degeneration of her body – the carefully arranged medical appointments, the hidden symptoms- all with the deftness of a cheating wife.” ( 168). Sophie was caught of the victim of her own act. Her affair with Stefano remained a secret, her disease remained a secret all because of a fear she had of not being good enough for Anton. She was so concerned of what Anton would say if he were to find out she was unable to bear children she kept her inequities a secret so he would not think anything wrong of her.
Emiko's emotional scar comes from many different experiences in her life. All result from the dropping of the bomb. The first happens upon hearing the death of her parents, and her brother. After her parents death, her grandfather told her “you must be strong.” (30) When the death of her brother came, and she awoke one morning to find his bed empty, the nurse tending to them, told her she “ must remain strong” (39). All throughout Emiko's life, starting with lying in that hospital bed, she remained strong. Even though the thoughts of her burned parents lying in the streets and her brother struggling to call out in his last breaths haunted her, she remained strong.
One of Emiko's emotional scars started with the hate of the men who did this to her and her country. It started with them inspecting her burns, and taking photographs of her as if she was an “object of fascination”(30). At the young, tender age of six, Emiko was introduced to the first stab of hatred towards the men who did this to her country, “ the men who did this to me and my brother, the men who killed my parents”(31). Every night she swore to herself she would not cry in their presence, that she would never “ summit willingly to these men- to tell them I had been defeated, just as they hoped I would be”(31). And yet this hate for the men and their country did not cease to exist ten years later when they tried to help her by fixing her face. She had told Helen to tell the plastic surgeon that “ his country is a barbaric, monstrous place I should be happy to leave as soon as they let me” (129). Emiko refused to see the country that killed her family as someone trying to help her. She didn't want the Americans help and was only there because her grandfather wished it. Emiko, unlike Sophie, refused to become dependent on Americans.
In conclusion, Sophie and Emiko prove to be prime examples of the feminist view on literature. Through living with patriarchy and the male dominance in their lives, their similarities and differences, their way of upbringing and their physical and emotional scars, prove that even though both of them have grown up in two completely countries, with two completely different ways of upbringing, they both have their similarities. Their lives intertwine with the patriarchal views of the dominant males in their social surroundings. Sophie's life was first run by her father, sending her to America, and then by her constant reliance on male company and Anton to take care of her. Emiko lived to keep her grandfather alive and healthy, and after moving to America, become her own woman not relying on anyone (knowingly) to make her life the way she wanted. “ The Ash Garden” is truly a remarkable piece of literature that not only captures a pure feminist outlook on the two female characters life but also represents their role in society. Dennis Bock made these role of females comprehensible to any one who would read this novel. He made a gripping tale through the lives of two separate woman nothing less then a masterpiece.
