Divisions of race and class in Tropic of Orange

“Like Buzzworm said, every watch has got a story. Everybody’s got a timepiece and a piece of time. Watch was an outward reflection of your personal time. Had nothing to do with being on time. Had to do with a sense of time."

Yamashita’s novel makes an argument about the differentiation between the different classes and how those classes interact with one another. The characters all represent a variety of different classes. Emi and Gabriel represent the more middle-class upper class people. Their lives are largely concerned with their careers and themselves. Bobby and Rafaela are more like the working class, and immigrants. Their lives are defines by the labor they do for the class above them. Buzzworm is also lower than Gabriel and Emi though I’m not sure how he compares with the immigrant status of Bobby and Rafaela. Manzanar is representative of the homeless population. He exists seemingly outside of the usual social ideals, since he was a surgeon, a contributing member of society, but he willingly walked away from it. He also is indicative of how we often judge homeless people as having some sort of mental illness and that’s why they are stuck in that situation. Archangel is another character who exists outside of the norms of society. I'm note sure exactly where he fits on any of these scales especially since he also has certain supernatural powers, but maybe that is Yamashita's point with all these characters you cannot define of put them on a scale and sum up who they are by the title of what class they are in.

It seems she also makes a similar point about race. That the categories we choose to try and define people are not how we should be looking at things at all. This can be seen in the first Bobby passage where the narrations says, "If you knew your Asians you'd think Bobby was..." and the novel lists out this whole list that is wrong. Basically the categories that we have to classify people don't fit Bobby, because perhaps we should not be viewing things in this way. With so many set categories that can not encompass who a person is or define them.