The Significance of the Title

The title The Enemy seems, at first, to point plainly at the wounded American soldier — an enemy of Japan in the middle of a bitter war, a man Sadao's country would have him kill. But the story steadily empties that word of its force. The "enemy" who washes up on the shore turns out to be simply a suffering, frightened, dying human being, no different in his helplessness from any other. As Sadao and Hana tend him, the label of "enemy" comes to feel false and hollow. The title is therefore ironic: it names the man by the category that war imposes on him, only to show that the category does not survive contact with his humanity. …