#1 Different Views of a Tragedy

Both Embrey and Adam's attempt to give the reader a sence of what it was like to live at Manzanar. The messages they are trying to convey, however, are very different. Embrey focuses on the hardships that are associated with Manzanar. She tells how her little brother was forced to stay there for years. She reinforces the hopelessness experienced when she tells her brother he should study and he responds, "What's the use of studying American history when we're behind barbed wires?" Overall, Embrey's picture of the camp is very dark and sad. Adam's photographs, however, tell a totally different story. Instead of focusing on the bad associated with the camp, Adam's showes how even through hardships the people oppressed were able to servive. He shows pictures of people working as well as playing cards and being, from the looks of it, relatively successful. Both of these accounts are true, but both give very different information. Without reading both, an accurate view of the camp could not be formulated.