Properties of Thirst

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses death by suicide, racism, and references to racial slurs, which are obscured.

“Up to that significant exchange it had not occurred to Hauser that Jews were people in the modern world, that a Jew could walk around same as him in pants and speak American. Up to that moment, to the extent that he had thought of them at all, he had thought of Jews the way he imagined dinosaurs, as things he’d been told existed in the distant past or roamed the earth before America or he, himself, was ever born.”

Hauser’s ignorance as well as his lack of experience is evident in his attitude toward Schiff’s Jewish identity. Having never met or encountered a Jewish person before, Hauser considers people of this faith and ethnicity not merely “others” but people who no longer really exist. His lack of knowledge about this ethnic group stems entirely from the Christian Bible, and thus he assumes that the modern world doesn’t contain Jewish individuals. Hauser’s ignorance parallels the fears that lead to the internment of Japanese Americans.

“There was a thirst for betterment as plain, as basic, as the thirst for water and the satisfaction of its need was as expected and assumed as rain from heaven, rain in summer, rain in Spain. If you could not make it here, in this land of opp, you did not deserve to call yourself American.”

Schiff recounts his parents’ ambitions and ideals as they emigrated from Europe to Chicago. He understands instinctively that because of the ways in which they had to struggle, his parents expect him to take advantage of the opportunities afforded him—specifically education. His description of his parents’ aspirations as a “thirst” aligns with the symbolic meaning of water throughout the novel.

“The good thing about Lone Pine was that there was nothing here, as Schiff was learning, of any interest to the world in general, not to anyone at all, especially an enemy combatant.

Except water.

All the water that the fifth largest city in the United States needs to survive.”

The importance of water and its state as a limited resource is frequently on Schiff’s mind as he plans Manzanar. Supplying enough water for such a large number of people is only one challenge he faces. The size of the “city” that will result when the camp is full will make Manzanar the fifth largest in the US, and