TOPIC 4 OF 6
The Enemy
🎓 Class 12
English
CBSE
Theory
Ch 4 — The Enemy
⏱ ~35 min
🌐 Language: [gtranslate]
📖 English Passage Assessment
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This CBSE English Passage Assessment will be based on: The Enemy
Assessment Format:
• 2 Short Answer Questions (2 marks each) = 4 marks
• 2 Fill in the Blanks Questions (1 mark each) = 2 marks
• 2 Short Answer Questions (1 mark each) = 2 marks
• 2 Multiple Choice Questions (1 mark each) = 2 marks
Total: 8 Questions, 10 Marks
📖 English Grammar Assessment
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This CBSE English Grammar Assessment will be based on: The Enemy
Assessment Format:
• 10 Randomized Grammar Questions (1 mark each)
• Question Types: Fill in the Blanks, MCQs, Error Identification, Reported Speech, Sentence Completion
Total: 10 Questions, 10 Marks
📖 English Vocabulary Assessment
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This English Vocabulary assessment will be based on: The Enemy
Targeting Vocabulary & Usage with Intermediate difficulty.
Before You Begin — The Moral Dilemma at the Heart of the Story
It is wartime. A wounded enemy soldier washes up at a doctor's doorstep. Should he be saved as a patient, or handed over as a prisoner? This story refuses a simple answer. Explore these questions before reading.
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"Before You Read" — The Text's Own Prompt: An American prisoner of war is washed ashore in a dying state and is found at the doorstep of a Japanese doctor. Should he save him as a doctor or hand him over to the Army as a patriot?
This is not a question with a single correct answer — it is a genuine moral dilemma, where two legitimate obligations conflict. The doctor's professional oath (do no harm; heal the wounded) conflicts with the citizen's patriotic duty (report enemy combatants; support the war effort). Pearl Buck's story is remarkable because it does not resolve the dilemma neatly: Sadao does both — he heals the soldier AND reports him to the General — and the resolution comes through an accident of power (the General forgets to send assassins) rather than through a clear moral victory. The story asks us to sit with that discomfort.
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Anticipation Guide — Duty vs. Compassion: Think of a situation where following the rules would require you to act in a way that feels deeply inhumane. How would you decide what to do? Does professional duty ever override the basic human impulse to help someone who is suffering?
The story presents Sadao as a man who does not feel great warmth for the American ("He is my enemy. All Americans are my enemy") but whose hands treat the wound instinctively, before his mind has resolved the moral question. This is Buck's insight: the healing impulse is more fundamental than ideology. Sadao does not choose compassion over duty through a heroic act of will — he chooses it because his training has made the doctor's response automatic. The story suggests that professional formation can carry moral weight that abstract reasoning cannot.
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Historical Context: The story is set during World War II, when Japan and America were at war. Anti-American sentiment in Japan was intense; sheltering an enemy POW was a serious criminal offence. Why does this historical context make Sadao's choice more, not less, significant?
The higher the cost of a moral choice, the more significant it becomes. In peacetime, a doctor who heals a stranger is performing ordinary professional duty. In wartime, when the stranger is an enemy and the doctor risks arrest, his family's safety, and his career — when even his servants refuse to help and the social pressure to hand the man over is overwhelming — choosing to heal requires something extraordinary. Buck uses the wartime setting to strip away the comfortable distance that makes moral principles easy to profess and to show what those principles actually cost when tested.
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Author's Perspective: Pearl S. Buck spent much of her life in China and was deeply committed to understanding across national and cultural boundaries. How might her biography shape her treatment of this story about a Japanese doctor and an American soldier?
Buck's life between cultures gave her a clear-eyed view of how national identity and political allegiance are constructed — and how fragile those constructions are when a wounded human being is lying in front of you. She was also deeply suspicious of war as a moral framework. By making her protagonist Japanese — not American — she deliberately avoids the comfortable position of writing about her own people's heroism. Sadao's compassion is more challenging and more universal precisely because it crosses the line of "enemy."
About the Author
The Story — A Doctor's Impossible Choice
The Enemy Short Story | Vistas Ch. 4
1
Dr Sadao Hoki's house stood on a rocky stretch of the Japanese coast — a low, square stone building set above a narrow beach fringed with twisted pines. As a boy, Sadao had climbed those pines barefoot, just as he had seen men do in the South Sea islands his father had taken him to visit. His father had pointed towards those distant islands and said: "Those are the stepping stones to the future for Japan." His father had never joked or played with him, but had spent infinite pains on Sadao's education — that was his father's form of love. At twenty-two, Sadao had been sent to America to master surgery and medicine. He had returned at thirty, and before his father died had become celebrated both as a surgeon and as a scientist — working to perfect a discovery that would render wounds entirely clean. Because of this, he had not been sent abroad with the troops. Additionally, the elderly General might require surgery; Sadao was being kept in Japan for that eventuality.
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On the evening the story begins, Sadao stood on the veranda watching mist rise from the cold ocean and curl around the pines below. His wife Hana came to stand beside him, her arm through his. He had met Hana in America but had waited to fall in love with her until he was certain she was Japanese — his father would never have accepted otherwise. Their marriage, arranged in the traditional way after they returned home, had been perfectly happy. They stood together now as the fog thickened. And then both of them saw something dark emerge from the water. Imagery
3
A man came out of the ocean. He was flung upward by a wave, staggered a few steps with his arms raised, and then collapsed face-down on the sand. Sadao and Hana ran down the steps. When they turned the man over, they saw his face. "A white man!" Hana whispered. The wet cap fell away to reveal long yellow hair and a rough beard. He was unconscious. Sadao's expert fingers found the wound at once — a gun wound on the right side of the lower back, reopened by rock. The flesh was blackened with powder. He had been shot days ago and left untended. Blood seeped freely. Sadao stanched it with sea moss from the beach. Imagery
4
Sadao stood and brushed the sand from his hands. "The best thing we could do would be to put him back in the sea," he said. Hana agreed, steadily. Yet neither of them moved. They stared at the motionless figure with a strange, involuntary reluctance. Then Sadao found the battered cap — the letters "U.S. Navy" barely legible. An American sailor. A prisoner of war. "He has escaped," Hana said softly, "and that is why he is wounded." Irony
5
Sadao was direct about his feelings: "The strange thing is that if the man were whole I could turn him over to the police without difficulty. I care nothing for him. He is my enemy. All Americans are my enemy. And he is only a common fellow. You see how foolish his face is. But since he is wounded…" Hana finished his sentence: "You also cannot throw him back to the sea." Then she made the decision that would change everything: "We must carry him into the house." Irony
Reading with Insight — Section 1
Q1. Will Dr Sadao be arrested on the charge of harbouring an enemy?
Sadao is aware of the risk from the very beginning — he says explicitly: "If we sheltered a white man in our house we should be arrested." He reports the soldier to the General precisely to avoid arrest, and the General's protection — and eventual negligence in sending the assassins — effectively shields Sadao. He is not arrested, not because the risk was not real, but because his social position (the General's personal surgeon) and a degree of luck protect him. The story does not present him as safe — his servants leave, his position is genuinely precarious throughout.
Q2. Will Hana help the wounded man and wash him herself?
Yes — Hana washes the man herself after the servant Yumi refuses, declaring she will not wash "so dirty a white man." Hana is initially afraid and even shares the servants' revulsion at the idea of helping an enemy. But Yumi's stubbornness stirs Hana's pride and indignation — she thinks "Is this anything but a man? And a wounded helpless man!" — and she takes over the task herself. Her act of washing the soldier is both a practical decision and a moral one: she chooses to see a suffering human being before she sees an enemy.
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They carried the man — he was light as a half-starved bird, all feathers and skeleton — through the side door and into the bedroom that had been Sadao's father's, furnished entirely in the Japanese style to please the old man. They laid him on the deeply matted floor. Hana fetched a quilt covered in flowered silk. When she murmured that he was too dirty, Sadao told her they would have Yumi wash him. But Yumi refused — flatly, stubbornly, with a round dull face set in resistance. Hana, alone now with the unconscious man, washed him herself. Symbolism
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Sadao examined the wound carefully with his surgeon's light. "The bullet is still there," he said, with cool professional interest. "The bleeding is not superficial. He has lost much blood." Hana asked, almost pleadingly: "Don't try to save him! What if he should live?" Sadao replied quietly: "What if he should die?" He turned away — the question had answered itself. He unfolded a sterilised towel on the floor of the tokonoma alcove and arranged his instruments. He put on his surgeon's coat. The operation was beginning. Symbolism
8
During the operation, Hana had to administer the anaesthetic — something she had never done before. When the blood began to flow freely and Sadao worked with swift precision, she felt faint and had to leave the room to retch in the garden. Sadao continued alone. He had forgotten Hana's distress. He was focused entirely on the wound, the bullet, the tissue. His hands did their work with the same excellence they would have brought to any surgery. At one point — irritated by the unconscious man's presence, by his own inability to stop and attend to Hana — he muttered: "Groan if you like. I am not doing this for my own pleasure. In fact, I do not know why I am doing it." It was honest. He did not know. Irony
Reading with Insight — Section 2
Q3. How does Sadao and Hana manage to keep the soldier's presence a secret — and does it remain secret?
They do not keep it a secret from their servants — they tell them directly. But they offer a justification: they intend to give the man to the police. The servants, unconvinced and frightened, eventually leave the household entirely. Sadao reports the soldier to the General and receives a promise that assassins will be sent — so the secret is partially disclosed at the highest level. However, the General forgets to act, and the servants' departure means there is no one left to report Sadao to the police. The soldier recovers and escapes by boat to a neighbouring island, from where he can signal passing ships. The secrecy is maintained not through concealment but through the combined effect of social dislocation and bureaucratic indifference.
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The surgery succeeded. The bullet was removed; the wound was closed. The soldier — young, perhaps not yet twenty-five, with a foolish face and yellow stubble — began to recover in the room that had belonged to Sadao's father. Days passed. The servants, frightened and resentful, gave notice and left one by one. The house felt strange and exposed without them. Sadao reported to the General, who was amused and protective: "You can trust me. I will send my private assassins tonight. They are very capable." Sadao thanked him. He went home and waited. Nobody came that night, or the next.
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Meanwhile, the soldier — whose name was Tom — gained strength. He and Sadao spoke briefly through the door. Tom understood his position and was grateful but not effusive. He asked no questions about the plan. Sadao found himself watching the man with a strange detachment — not warmth, but something that was not quite indifference either. He brought Tom food himself, since the servants were gone. Once, he sat and looked at the young man's sleeping face, and tried to understand why he had saved him. He could not fully answer. Irony
11
After many days, when the General cancelled Sadao's summons to attend him and mentioned, almost casually, "Oh, I forgot about your prisoner" — Sadao understood that the assassins would never come. The General had been preoccupied with his own health; the matter had simply slipped from his mind. The protection and the threat were both dissolved in the same act of indifference. Irony
12
Sadao arranged Tom's escape himself. He gave him a boat, a supply of dried fish and water, a flashlight, two quilts, and instructions to row to a small uninhabited island nearby and wait there — flashing the light if he needed help, to signal passing ships if he wanted to be rescued. "I cannot be sure the coast is clear," Sadao told him honestly. "I am doing my best for you." Tom took his hand briefly. "Okay," he said. He went out into the dark and paddled away into the fog. Symbolism
13
Afterwards, Sadao sat with Hana and tried to understand why he had not been able to let the man die. He was Japanese. He had been educated to serve Japan. The man was the enemy — an enemy who would, if recovered, return to fight against Japan. And yet Sadao had operated on him, nursed him, fed him, and finally arranged his freedom. Later, at sea, fishing alone in his small boat, Sadao looked back at the headland and thought about it. He was not certain he could have done differently. The surgeon in him would not allow the wound to go unattended. The man in him would not allow the recovered patient to be killed in his father's room. He thought of Tom's face — foolish, young, frightened. He was not able to feel that the man was his enemy. Symbolism
Vocabulary Power — Words from the Story
Key Words and Their Meanings
haori
noun (Japanese)
A loose outer garment worn over the kimono in Japan, similar to a short jacket — open at the front and not tied with a sash.
"She came to him affectionately, a dark-blue woollen haori over her kimono."
tokonoma
noun (Japanese)
A recessed alcove or niche in a Japanese room, traditionally used for displaying a flower arrangement, scroll painting, or ornament — a space of aesthetic and spiritual significance.
"He unfolded a sterilised towel upon the floor of the tokonoma alcove, and put his instruments out upon it."
stanch / staunch
verb
To stop the flow of blood or another liquid from a wound; to check or restrain a flow.
"His trained hands seemed of their own will to be doing what they could to stanch the fearful bleeding."
stupor
noun
A state of near-unconsciousness or greatly impaired awareness, typically from illness, injury, or extreme exhaustion.
"The man moaned with pain in his stupor but he did not awaken."
pallor
noun
An unhealthy paleness of the face, typically associated with illness, blood loss, or extreme fear.
"The utter pallor of the man's unconscious face moved him first to stoop and feel his pulse."
voluble
adjective
Talking with great fluency and at great length; prone to speaking too much or too freely.
"The professor's wife was so voluble" — Sadao had almost not attended the party where he met Hana.
superstitious
adjective
Excessively credulous in belief in supernatural forces or ill omens; guided by irrational fear rather than reason.
"She herself was also frightened, although she was not superstitious as the old gardener was."
menace
noun / verb
A person or thing that is likely to cause harm; a threat. As a verb: to threaten or endanger.
"Here he was her enemy, a menace, living or dead" — Hana's instinctive categorisation of the American as a source of danger regardless of his state.
Character Relationship Map
The Four Key Characters and Their Relationships
Click any character node to read a detailed analysis of their role and significance.
Dr Sadao Hoki — The Story's Moral Centre: Sadao is a man of two worlds — Japanese by birth and loyalty, American-educated by training. His identity is never simple, even to himself. He is honest about not caring for the American ("He is my enemy") yet cannot stop his surgeon's hands from treating the wound. This gap between conscious ideology and instinctive professional action is the story's central psychological insight: training can produce moral behaviour that conscious reasoning might not. Sadao operates, nurses, and ultimately arranges the soldier's escape — not out of warmth, not out of political principle, but because the doctor in him cannot do otherwise. He reports the man to the General, which makes him simultaneously a dutiful citizen and a man who has already decided to save his patient. His final meditation on the sea — unable to understand his own actions — is the story's most honest moment.
Tom — The American Soldier as Human Being: Buck is careful to make Tom neither heroic nor pitiful. He has "a foolish face" — Sadao notes this twice. He is young, frightened, and helpless. He does not speak much; he asks few questions; he accepts help with simple gratitude. This deliberate ordinariness is Buck's point: the "enemy" is not a monster, not a symbol, not a propaganda image — he is a young man who happens to be wounded and happens to be on the wrong coast. Tom's very ordinariness is what makes Sadao's initial categorisation of him as "the enemy" feel inadequate and eventually impossible to sustain.
Hana — The Moral Conscience in Motion: Hana is not a passive figure. At every critical moment, she makes a decision: it is Hana who says "We must carry him into the house." It is Hana who washes the man herself when Yumi refuses, overcoming her own revulsion through a combination of pride and moral clarity ("Is this anything but a man?"). It is Hana who administers the anaesthetic, fainting and returning. Her journey from initial fear and reluctance to practical compassion mirrors and in many ways leads Sadao's. She is also more consistently afraid than Sadao — more aware of the danger to their children and household — which makes her repeated choices to act with humanity more courageous, not less.
The General — Irony as Moral Verdict: The General is the story's most complex minor character because he is simultaneously the authority who should punish Sadao and the mechanism through which Sadao escapes. He promises assassins and forgets to send them. He is amused by Sadao's dilemma rather than outraged. His indifference — rooted in self-interest (he needs his surgeon) and the distraction of his own illness — is a devastating portrait of how power operates: not through evil intent but through casual, self-absorbed neglect. The story's irony is that Sadao is protected not by moral recognition but by the General's forgetfulness. Justice, Buck implies, is not what operates in wartime — only luck and self-interest.
The Servants — Social Conditioning vs. Humanity: Yumi's refusal to wash "so dirty a white man" is the story's starkest example of how social conditioning can overcome basic human decency. The gardener's warning — that the sea and the gun have already punished the man, and healing him will bring revenge — represents the superstitious face of the same conditioning. Their collective departure from the household removes Sadao's domestic support system and forces him and Hana to manage the soldier's recovery alone, which paradoxically deepens their personal involvement. The servants represent the society whose judgement Sadao and Hana are defying — and whose absence, ironically, gives them the freedom to continue defying it.
Plot Arc — Freytag's Pyramid
The Structure of the Story's Moral Tension
Click on any point of the arc to read what happens at that stage.
Exposition — Sadao and Hana on the Veranda: We are introduced to Dr Sadao Hoki — his coastal home, his distinguished career, his Japanese values and American education, his marriage to Hana. The fog rises from the ocean. The setting is established as one of apparent peace and order. Everything about Sadao's life is settled, successful, and morally uncomplicated. The moment the dark shape emerges from the water, the story's central conflict begins.
Rising Action — Discovery, Decision, and the Operation: The American soldier is discovered, identified, and brought into the house despite all rational reasons not to. The servants' resistance, Yumi's refusal, Hana's washing of the man, Sadao's preparation of instruments, and the surgery itself all constitute the rising action. Each step deepens the commitment and raises the stakes. Sadao reports to the General; the General promises assassins. The soldier recovers. The servants leave.
Climax — The Operation and Its Aftermath: The surgical operation is the story's moral and narrative climax. At this moment, Sadao is fully committed — he is inside his patient's body, bullet in hand. There is no longer any question of turning the man over to the police. The doctor has chosen. Everything after this is consequence. The climax is also the moment when Sadao admits, truthfully, that he does not know why he is doing this — which is Buck's deepest psychological insight.
Falling Action — The General, the Servants, the Waiting: Sadao navigates the aftermath: managing the General's promise of assassins that never arrive, the servants' departure, Tom's recovery, and his own growing unease. The tension gradually eases as the General's forgetfulness becomes apparent and the practical problem of Tom's escape takes shape. Sadao arranges the boat, the supplies, and the instructions. The moral crisis has passed; the practical one is being resolved.
Resolution — Tom's Escape and Sadao's Meditation: Tom rows away into the fog with Sadao's boat and provisions. The house is empty. Sadao and Hana are safe, though the servants are gone. Later, fishing alone at sea, Sadao reflects on what he has done and why — and finds that he cannot fully explain it, only that he could not do otherwise. The resolution is not triumphant — it is quiet, reflective, and open-ended. The question the story posed at the beginning ("Should he save him as a doctor or hand him over as a patriot?") is not resolved; it is simply left behind.
Moral Dilemma Analysis — Duty vs. Compassion
The Two Imperatives in Conflict
At the heart of The Enemy is a conflict between two legitimate obligations. Analyse both sides before forming your own view.
DUTY — The Patriotic Imperative
Sadao is a Japanese citizen during wartime. The American is a naval prisoner of war — an enemy combatant. Sheltering him is a criminal offence that endangers Sadao's family, career, and freedom. Japanese law and national loyalty demand that enemy prisoners be reported to the authorities. Sadao knows this and acknowledges it explicitly: he calls the man his enemy and says he cares nothing for him. He does report the man to the General — which represents his attempt to fulfil this duty.
COMPASSION — The Medical Imperative
Sadao took a medical oath to heal the wounded, regardless of who they are. A doctor's training makes this response instinctive — his hands begin treating the wound before his mind has decided what to do. The man is wounded, unconscious, and dying. In this condition he is not a soldier or an enemy — he is a patient. The medical tradition, from Hippocrates onward, does not permit the doctor to choose patients by political allegiance. Sadao's training embodies this principle even when his conscious loyalty does not.
How Does the Story Resolve It?
Buck's genius is that the story does not resolve the dilemma cleanly. Sadao tries to fulfil both obligations: he heals the man AND reports him to the General. The "resolution" — the General's forgetfulness — is not a moral victory; it is an accidental reprieve. The story implies that moral dilemmas of this kind cannot be resolved by human ingenuity or courage; they are resolved by circumstance, by chance, by the indifference of power. What the story does celebrate is the instinct that refuses to let a human being die when it is within one's power to save him — regardless of what category that human being belongs to.
CBSE Extract-Based Questions (CBQ)
CBQ 1 — The Decision at the Beach
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
"The strange thing is," he said, "that if the man were whole I could turn him over to the police without difficulty. I care nothing for him. He is my enemy. All Americans are my enemy. And he is only a common fellow. You see how foolish his face is. But since he is wounded…" "You also cannot throw him back to the sea," Hana said. "Then there is only one thing to do. We must carry him into the house."
— Pearl S. Buck, The Enemy | Vistas, Chapter 4
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What does Sadao's statement "if the man were whole I could turn him over" reveal about his moral reasoning? L4 Analyse3 marksSadao's statement reveals a moral logic that operates on the basis of physical condition rather than political identity. He does not feel compassion for the American as a person — he explicitly states he cares nothing for him and regards all Americans as enemies. But the wounded state introduces a category that overrides enemy status: the patient. Sadao's training as a surgeon has created an imperative that kicks in automatically when a wounded body is present, regardless of whose body it is. His reasoning is not that the American deserves mercy — it is that a wounded person cannot be denied medical attention. This is a professional ethic, not a personal one, and it is the more powerful for being involuntary.
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Analyse the significance of Hana completing Sadao's unfinished sentence. What does this reveal about her character and their relationship? L4 Analyse2 marksHana's completing of Sadao's sentence — "You also cannot throw him back to the sea" — reveals two things simultaneously. First, her intelligence: she grasps the moral logic of the situation as quickly as Sadao does, without needing it spelled out. Second, her agency: she does not wait for Sadao to reach his own conclusion and lead; she arrives at it independently and, in a sense, decisively. The sentence she then speaks — "We must carry him into the house" — is the decision that drives the entire story forward. Far from being a passive supporting character, Hana is the one who transforms moral paralysis into action. Their relationship is one of genuine partnership: neither leads consistently; each contributes the clarity the other momentarily lacks.
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Why does Sadao observe that the soldier has "a foolish face"? What is the narrative purpose of this repeated detail? L4 Analyse2 marksSadao's observation that Tom has "a foolish face" — repeated at least twice in the story — serves a crucial narrative purpose: it strips the American of any heroic or romantic status that might make Sadao's compassion feel easier or more "earned." This is not a noble enemy, a gallant prisoner of war, or a figure who inspires admiration. He is an ordinary, rather undistinguished young man. By saving a "foolish-faced" common soldier — someone for whom he feels neither respect nor warmth — Sadao's medical and moral instinct is shown to operate independently of personal regard. The compassion is not for Tom specifically; it is for the wounded human condition in general. This universalises the story's argument.
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The story's "Before You Read" section asks: "Should he save him as a doctor or hand him over to the Army as a patriot?" By the end of the story, has this question been answered? Justify your response. L5 Evaluate3 marksThe question is answered in practice but not in principle. In practice, Sadao saves the soldier AND reports him to the General — attempting to fulfil both obligations simultaneously. The soldier escapes through a combination of Sadao's active help and the General's passive negligence. So the immediate dilemma is resolved in favour of the doctor — the patient is saved. But the question is not answered in principle because the resolution does not vindicate one obligation over the other through a clean moral argument. Buck seems to suggest that when instinct, training, and humanity converge as they do in Sadao, the doctor's imperative is simply more fundamental than the patriot's — but she arrives at this conclusion through circumstance and accident rather than through triumphant moral clarity. The discomfort of the unanswered question is, arguably, the story's most honest achievement.
Reading with Insight — NCERT Questions
Model Answers (150 words each)
1. What characteristics of Dr Sadao's father are revealed in the story? How did his upbringing shape Sadao's values?
Refer to the father's emphasis on education, Japan's destiny, and the legacy he left in Sadao. [120–150 words]
Sadao's father is depicted as a man of intense seriousness and focused ambition — he never joked or played with his son, but devoted himself entirely to the child's education, which he considered his life's most important work. His patriotism was absolute: he pointed to distant Pacific islands as "stepping stones to the future for Japan" and sent his son to America specifically to acquire the finest medical knowledge available, in order to bring it back and serve the nation. This shaped Sadao profoundly: his drive for professional excellence, his pride in his surgical skill, and his deeply ingrained sense of duty to Japan are all his father's legacy. Yet the story suggests that the father's intense cultivation of Sadao's professional excellence — his insistence on mastery — inadvertently instilled a doctor's ethic so powerful that it overrides even the patriotism the father also tried to teach.
2. There are many instances in the story where Sadao and Hana find themselves in a conflict between their patriotism and their humanity. Identify the most important instances and explain how each is resolved.
Trace at least three specific moments of conflict and show the direction in which each resolves. [150 words]
The first major instance is the discovery on the beach: both Sadao and Hana agree verbally that returning the man to the sea would be "kindest" — the patriotic position — yet neither moves to do so. Humanity wins through inaction. The second is Hana's decision to wash the soldier herself after Yumi refuses: her revulsion and fear (patriotic conditioning) give way to the moral clarity that he is "just a man, a wounded helpless man." The third is Sadao's decision to operate — despite knowing the surgery will restore an enemy combatant — because the surgeon's imperative is stronger than the citizen's. The fourth is Sadao's report to the General — his attempt to discharge the patriotic obligation while the medical one is already being fulfilled. In each instance, the patriotic and humanitarian impulses coexist rather than simply cancelling each other out; the resolution is always partial, always complicated.
3. Why is the story called "The Enemy"? Who is the enemy in the story and how does this concept evolve?
Analyse all possible meanings of "enemy" in the story — political, personal, internal. [150 words]
At its most literal, "The Enemy" refers to the American soldier — an enemy combatant of Japan in wartime. But the concept evolves throughout the story in three distinct directions. First, the soldier is progressively de-enemised: from the initial shock of "a white man" on the beach, through the surgery, to the late nights when Sadao brings him food and they speak through the door — by the end, Sadao cannot feel that Tom is his enemy. Second, the story suggests that the real "enemy" is the ideology of war itself — the political system that forces decent people to categorise suffering human beings as threats to be eliminated rather than patients to be healed. Third, there is an internal enemy: Sadao's own conditioning, his patriotic training, which tells him to feel hostility but cannot make him act on it when faced with a bleeding body. The title is therefore both literal and ironic.
4. What is the role of the General in the story? Is he a villain, a protector, or something more ambiguous?
Analyse the General's behaviour, motivations, and the irony of his role in the story's resolution. [150 words]
The General is neither villain nor protector in any simple sense — he is something more ironic: a self-interested authority whose negligence accidentally serves justice. He is amused by Sadao's dilemma rather than outraged. He promises to send private assassins — not because he endorses Sadao's illegal act but because he values his personal surgeon too much to allow him to be arrested, and because dealing with the problem privately is more convenient than a formal report. His promise to send assassins creates a false sense of impending resolution; his forgetfulness dissolves that threat. The General represents how political power actually operates in practice: not through moral clarity or consistent application of principles, but through self-interest, distraction, and the casual indifference that comes with absolute authority. The story's irony is that Tom's life is saved not by heroism but by the General's preoccupation with his own health.
Frequently Asked Questions — The Enemy
What is the central moral dilemma in 'The Enemy' by Pearl S. Buck?
Dr Sadao faces a conflict between his duty as a Japanese patriot — who should hand over an American prisoner of war — and his duty as a doctor, which compels him to heal the wounded regardless of identity. The story explores what happens when professional ethics and humanitarian impulse conflict with national loyalty, and suggests that the healing imperative is the most fundamental of the three.
Why does Dr Sadao not hand over the American soldier to the police immediately?
Sadao's trained hands begin treating the wound instinctively before his mind resolves the moral question. A wounded man, he reasons, cannot be handed over — the doctor's imperative takes over. He does report the soldier to the General, but by then the surgery is complete and Tom is recovering. The General's protection and eventual negligence mean the soldiers never come, and Sadao arranges Tom's escape himself.
What is the significance of the General's role in the story?
The General represents political authority and is the person to whom Sadao dutifully reports the American's presence. He promises to send private assassins but forgets, preoccupied with his own illness. His indifference accidentally saves Tom's life and protects Sadao. The General embodies the story's irony: Sadao is saved from punishment not by moral recognition but by the self-interested negligence of power.
How does Hana contribute to the story's moral argument?
Hana is not a passive character. She makes the decisive statement — "We must carry him into the house." She washes the soldier herself when the servant refuses, overcoming her own fear and revulsion. She administers the anaesthetic during the operation. At every critical moment, she chooses humanity over convenience. Her journey from initial fear to practical compassion mirrors and often leads Sadao's, making the moral argument of the story a joint one rather than purely Sadao's.
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