The Enemy is the fourth chapter of the NCERT Class 12 English Vistas textbook — a short story by Pearl S. Buck (the author is named in the book; this page does not add biography).
This page gives you a complete but compact revision set: the story in six memorisable beats, theme-wise analysis, evidence-based character sketches, literary devices quoted line by line, a quote bank with explanations, common factual mistakes, and a method for writing complete answers to the chapter’s own exercises.
These notes follow the 2026-27 session and are built on the rationalised NCERT edition of Vistas. If you are revising the night before, read the six-beat summary first, then use the table of contents to jump to any section you need — themes, characters, quotes, or the answer-writing notes at the end.
Whenever a quotation matters to your answer, you can verify the full wording against the official NCERT PDF of Vistas.
The whole story turns on one question: a Japanese surgeon finds a wounded American prisoner of war washed up on his shore — should a doctor save him, or should a citizen of wartime Japan hand him over to the army? Everything in the chapter is a different answer to that single question.
The Story and Its Setting at a Glance
Dr Sadao Hoki is a famous Japanese surgeon and scientist who trained in America and is kept in Japan for two reasons: his research on making wounds perfectly clean, and the possibility that the old General will need his surgery. That second fact matters — it is why the State protects him, and later why it leaves him alone.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Author | Pearl S. Buck |
| Book | NCERT Class 12 English Vistas, Chapter 4 |
| Setting | A low stone house on a lonely, rocky stretch of the Japanese coast, during World War II |
| Narrator | Third person, following Sadao and Hana closely |
| Central conflict | A doctor’s professional duty versus a citizen’s national loyalty |
| Main characters | Dr Sadao Hoki, Hana, Tom (the American prisoner), the General, and the servants Yumi, the gardener and the cook |
Before the summary, look at how the whole cast answers the story’s central question — “what should we do with the white man?” Each position below is a different piece of the same conflict, and every answer is anchored in a scene you can quote.
| Character | Their answer | Reasons and evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Sadao | Save him, then secretly get him out of Japan | “I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it” (p. 36); the police report is typed but never sent (p. 37) |
| Hana | Carry him in — though she first calls the kindest thing “to put him back into the sea” (p. 28) | Compassion grows through action: she washes him when Yumi refuses (p. 30) and feeds him by hand (p. 35) |
| Yumi (maid) | Refuse to touch him | “I have never washed a white man” — a matter of race and station as much as disobedience (p. 30) |
| Gardener | Let him die | Superstition: “they will take revenge on us” (p. 30); later he taunts that a true patriot would have let him bleed (pp. 36–37) |
| Cook | Let him die | Contempt: Sadao “saves any life” out of pride in his skill, not virtue (p. 37) |
| The General | Have him quietly killed | Private assassins who make “no noise” and know “the trick of inward bleeding” (p. 40) — a promise he later forgets (p. 45) |
Plot Summary of The Enemy
The plot is best remembered as a chain of moral decisions rather than a chain of events. Six beats carry the whole story, and each beat centres on a choice.
1. The Man from the Sea (pp. 25–27)
One foggy evening, a man is flung out of the ocean onto the beach below Sadao’s house. He is unconscious, blood soaking the sand — a gunshot wound in his lower back has been reopened when the rocks struck it. When Sadao turns the man’s head, he sees a white man; the battered cap carries the faded letters “U.S. Navy.”
They have found an escaped American prisoner of war.
2. The Decision (pp. 27–30)
Sadao’s first considered answer is to put the man back in the sea, and Hana agrees, calling it “the kindest thing” (p. 28). Yet neither can move.
Sadao reasons coldly that a whole man he could hand to the police without difficulty — he cares nothing for him — but the sentence breaks on “But since he is wounded…” That unfinished thought is the hinge of the story. They carry the man inside, telling the servants they intend to deliver him to the police.
When Hana orders the maid Yumi to wash him, Yumi refuses — she has never washed a white man (p. 30) — and Hana, in anger at Yumi’s stubbornness, washes him herself.
3. The Operation (pp. 31–35)
Sadao operates the same night in his father’s old room, with Hana giving the anaesthetic. She has never watched surgery: the blood drives her into the garden to be sick, and she comes back to finish the task (p. 33). Sadao, absorbed in the work, mutters that he does not know why he is doing it (p. 33).
The bullet sits dangerously near the kidney and comes out cleanly; Hana notices deep red scars just under the man’s ear — a detail that hints at what prisoners endure (p. 34). The patient wakes weak and terrified.
4. The Cost (pp. 35–38)
The rescue has a social price. The servants turn cold and hostile — a true patriot, the gardener says, would have let the man bleed to death (pp. 36–37) — and one morning they all leave together, Yumi crying over the children even as she goes (pp. 37–38).
Meanwhile Sadao types a report to the Chief of Police about the escaped prisoner and stops mid-sentence: the unfinished report goes into a secret drawer, unsent (p. 37). A messenger in official uniform later scares Hana into thinking the police have come, but he has only come to summon Sadao to the ailing General.
Left facing the confusion, Hana asks the story’s central question: “Why is it we cannot see clearly what we ought to do?” (p. 38).
5. The General’s Promise (pp. 38–44)
At the palace, the General — who needs Sadao alive for a delicate gall-bladder operation and trusts no other surgeon — offers a convenient solution. His private assassins are skilful men who know the trick of inward bleeding; Sadao has only to leave the partition of the guest room open at night and know nothing (p. 40).
Sadao agrees: the problem would be taken out of his hands, and Hana would never know. But the first night passes, then the second, then the third, and each morning the American is still there (pp. 41–42).
6. The Escape and the Unanswered Question (pp. 42–46)
Sadao stops waiting and plans to set Tom free. He buys food and bottled water secretly, drags his boat down to the shore and stocks it with quilts and a flashlight; Tom is dressed in Japanese clothes, a black cloth wrapped over his blond head.
The plan is precise: row to the tiny nearby island, live on raw fish, and signal once at sunset if all is well, twice if food runs out (p. 43). Tom rows out in the dark, and Sadao watches a single confirming flash before closing the partition. After the General’s own emergency surgery, Sadao reports that the prisoner escaped.
The old man is genuinely amazed — he had promised to have the man killed, but he admits he thought only of himself and forgot the promise (p. 45). That confession puts the General in Sadao’s power: no one can prosecute the man who saved the General. That night Sadao searches the dark sea for a light on the island.
There is none — Tom is gone, safe. And Sadao stands asking himself: “I wonder why I could not kill him?” (p. 46).
The Pattern of the Three Nights: a Reading the Story Does Not Spell Out
Between the General’s promise and the escape, Sadao waits through three nights, and the sounds of those nights trace his changing mind. The first night he sleeps badly and wakes at imagined noises — footsteps, a twig breaking, a stone displaced (p. 41). The second night a wind rises and he lies listening to bending boughs and whistling partitions (p. 42).
The third night brings quiet rain, and when a crash sounds he hears it as the assassins’ arrival — he physically holds Hana back from going to look (p. 42). The noises move from possible to real, and his vigilance tightens with them.
The text even explains his decision away — “it was not worth the strain” (p. 42) — yet the plan he builds next (a boat, a route, a signal code) is the plan of a man who could no longer let the State, or his own inaction, kill Tom. The three nights are the quiet evidence that his mercy was active, not passive.
Major Themes in The Enemy
Five ideas carry the story. Each row below gives a ready-made claim plus the evidence to back it — which is exactly the shape a theme paragraph should take.
| Theme | What it means in the story | Evidence (with page) | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professional duty vs national loyalty | A doctor’s training versus a citizen’s wartime duty to the State | “I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it” (p. 36); the unfinished report stays hidden in a secret drawer (p. 37) | The story stages the conflict as two loyalties pulling one man apart — and lets the professional one win, quietly and illegally. |
| Humanity above narrow prejudice | Saving a person matters more than the label “enemy” | Sadao finds Tom’s face “white and repulsive” (p. 45) yet cannot kill him; “I wonder why I could not kill him?” (p. 46) | The labels of war do not reach the operating table; shared human life outweighs national hatred. |
| The dehumanising effects of war | War turns a person into a category and ordinary people into enemies | “He is my enemy. All Americans are my enemy” (p. 28); Yumi refuses to wash a white man (p. 30); the servants leave rather than help (pp. 37–38) | Hatred is shown as a system that even kind people must resist — and the family’s isolation shows the social cost of resisting it. |
| Self-absorption of those in power | The powerful make decisions for their own convenience | The General trusts only Sadao because a German-trained surgeon “would consider the operation successful even if I died” (pp. 39–40); “I thought of nothing but myself. In short, I forgot my promise” (p. 45) | The General’s selfishness accidentally saves Tom — power is so self-centred that it forgets its own cruelties. |
| Prejudice exists on both sides | Neither nation owns the monopoly on racial prejudice | His American landlady and the difficulty of finding housing as a Japanese man (p. 45); his father would only accept a bride “pure in her race” (p. 25) | The story refuses a simple good-versus-bad picture: Sadao has felt prejudice himself, so his final mercy is a deliberate choice of who he wants to be. |
Moral of the story. Hana’s question — why can’t we see clearly what we ought to do — is the author’s question to the reader. The story’s answer is that shared humanity must rise above the labels of war: Sadao acts on a code deeper than nationalism, even when he cannot name it.
Beyond the Page: the Same Dilemma in Wartime Medicine and Refugee Care
The conflict is not confined to wartime Japan. Wherever medical professionals work with patients their own government calls enemies — wounded combatants, refugees, detainees — the same clash recurs between professional duty and national duty. Sadao’s reason for acting is strikingly modern: a professional code so deeply drilled that mercy became automatic, the same principle behind the doctor’s oath.
The story quietly argues that such a code, held firmly enough, can survive the pressures that wartime hatred builds around it.
Character Sketches in The Enemy
Every trait below is tied to a specific story moment, so you can lift these straight into a character answer. The section on page one of the chapter already showed how each person answers the central question; here is the deeper portrait.
Dr Sadao Hoki
- Profession: a famous surgeon and scientist, trained in America at his father’s insistence, kept in Japan for his research and for the General’s possible surgery.
- His hands decide before his mind: he stanches the bleeding even while he talks of putting the man back into the sea (p. 27).
- Professional identity is instinctive: during the operation the habit slips and he calls the enemy “my friend” (p. 34).
- The hidden report (p. 37) and the planned escape (pp. 42–43) show the same instinct surviving beyond the surgery.
- Change: he begins with “He is my enemy. All Americans are my enemy” (p. 28) and ends unable to answer “I wonder why I could not kill him?” (p. 46).
Hana
- She voices the hard choice first: “The kindest thing would be to put him back into the sea” (p. 28) — the safe answer, spoken before compassion moves her.
- She acts her way into sympathy: she washes Tom when Yumi refuses (p. 30) and feeds him herself because no servant will enter the room (p. 35).
- She stays honest about her feelings: she is “not liking him and yet moved to comfort him” (p. 35).
- Her refrains keep the moral question alive — “What shall we do with him?” (p. 42) and “Why is it we cannot see clearly what we ought to do?” (p. 38) — when everyone else wants the problem settled.
Tom (the American prisoner)
- Pathetically young: he looks “barely seventeen” (p. 36); when carried in he is as light as “a fowl that had been half-starved” (p. 28).
- Terror is his governing emotion: his fear is “as unmistakable as an animal’s” (p. 38), and the scars on his neck redden whenever he is afraid (p. 38).
- Grateful and open: “I guess if all the Japs were like you there wouldn’t have been a war” (p. 41) — he, like Sadao, begins to see a person instead of a label.
- Obedient under strain: he questions the escape plan — “Do I have to?” (p. 43) — but follows it exactly, and he walks “quite well” by the night of the escape (p. 44).
The General
- Self-preservation first: he trusts only Sadao, because other surgeons “would consider the operation successful even if I died” (pp. 39–40).
- His “solution” is assassination: private men who make no noise and know “the trick of inward bleeding,” with the body quietly removed (p. 40).
- He forgets the promise entirely: “I thought of nothing but myself. In short, I forgot my promise to you” (p. 45), and he insists it was “not lack of patriotism or dereliction of duty” (p. 45) — a defence the question in the textbook later asks you to judge.
- His function: the State’s cruelty is neutralised not by Sadao’s courage but by the General’s self-absorption, which leaves the General “in the palm” of Sadao’s hand (p. 45).
The Servants — Yumi, the Gardener, the Cook
- Everyday patriotism: helping the white man is un-Japanese — the gardener says a dying enemy should have been left to bleed (pp. 36–37).
- Superstition: the gardener fears that if the master heals what the gun and the sea did, “they will take revenge on us” (p. 30).
- Race and station: Yumi’s refusal is not disobedience but status — “I have never washed a white man… I am a poor person and it is not my business” (p. 30).
- Their exit and return: they leave together fearing Sadao will be “condemned as a traitor” (p. 37) and return once the foreigner is gone (p. 44) — their loyalty was to the family, not to the war.
Literary Devices in The Enemy
A device is useless in an answer without the exact line that proves it. This table gives both, so you can quote and explain in the same breath.
| Device | Exact line | What it does in the story |
|---|---|---|
| Symbolism — fog and sea | “come creeping up the beach below the house, wreathing around the pines” (p. 25); “The mists screened them now completely” (pp. 26–27) | The fog is concealment: the household’s mercy is possible only because the mist hides it. Secrecy is the price of doing right in a wartime state. |
| Symbolism — the island | “that little island not far from the coast… Nobody lives on it because in storm it is submerged. But this is not the season of storm” (p. 43) | A halfway sanctuary between Japan and freedom — reachable, uninhabited, and the waiting room for the Korean fishing boat. |
| Symbolism — the scars | “she observed deep red scars on his neck, just under the ear” (p. 34) | The visible sign of how the war treats its prisoners; the scars turn crimson again whenever Tom is afraid (p. 38) — fear written on the body. |
| Symbolism — the black cloth | “Sadao wrapped a black cloth about his blond head” (p. 44) | It hides the sign of the enemy — the blond hair — so Tom can move through the darkness toward freedom. |
| Irony | “I thought of nothing but myself. In short, I forgot my promise to you” (p. 45) | The man the State promised to kill survives because the State’s head forgot to order it — Sadao’s mercy is accidentally completed by the General’s selfishness. |
| Irony | “I do not know why I am doing it” (p. 33) | Sadao saves a life he claims not to want; action and stated intention contradict each other from the operating table to the last page. |
| Foreshadowing | “The scars on his neck were crimson for a moment. Those scars! What were they? Sadao did not ask.” (p. 38) | The unanswered question about the scars hints at how prisoners are treated — and warns of the fate waiting for Tom if he is handed over. |
| Imagery | “flung, it seemed, to his feet by a breaker” (p. 26); “He was very light, like a fowl that had been half-starved” (p. 28) | Two pictures of helplessness: the sea spits the man out, and his body is only feathers and skeleton — the war’s casualty arriving as a thing, not a person. |
| Contrast | Hana retching in the garden (p. 33) while Sadao’s hands stay steady; the servants’ “courtesy was as careful as ever, but their eyes were cold” (p. 36) | The family’s human reactions throw Sadao’s professional calm into relief; the polite cold eyes show how civility can mask betrayal. |
| Dark humour | “It seems a pity that we cannot better combine the German ruthlessness with the American sentimentality” (p. 40) | The General jokes about blending brutality and feeling in one man — a joke that measures how far power has drifted from human feeling. |
Important Quotes in The Enemy with Explanation
Here is a ready quote bank for any answer. Each line is exact, attributed to speaker and situation, with a one-line explanation of what it reveals.
| Quote | Speaker and situation | What it reveals |
|---|---|---|
| “The best thing that we could do would be to put him back in the sea.” | Sadao, answering his own question while the man bleeds (p. 27) | Duty, not cruelty, speaks first — the logical safe answer conflicts with what his hands are already doing. |
| “The kindest thing would be to put him back into the sea.” | Hana, agreeing (p. 28) | She calls the cruel option “kind” — the word shows how war has twisted the family’s moral vocabulary. Neither of them moves. |
| “He is my enemy. All Americans are my enemy.” | Sadao, explaining why a whole man would be easy to hand over (p. 28) | War has made the label “enemy” automatic — this is the nationalism Sadao must later overcome. |
| “But since he is wounded…” | Sadao’s unfinished sentence — the hinge of the story (p. 28) | Everything changes at this fragment: the wound makes the man a patient before he is an enemy. |
| “I do not know why I am doing it.” | Sadao to the unconscious Tom during the operation (p. 33) | His conscience is ahead of his reason; the mercy is instinctive and professional at once. |
| “I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it.” | Sadao answering Hana’s worry about the servants (p. 36) | The clearest statement of his professional code — training overrides nationality. |
| “Why is it we cannot see clearly what we ought to do?” | Hana, after the servants leave (p. 38) | The story’s central question voiced by Hana: the right action looks obvious from outside the dilemma, but blurry from inside it. |
| “I guess if all the Japs were like you there wouldn’t have been a war.” | Tom to Sadao (p. 41) | Tom, like Sadao, learns to see the person instead of the label — the human connection forming across enemy lines. |
| “It is only inconvenient to have you here any longer.” | Sadao, deflecting Tom’s gratitude (p. 43) | Sadao refuses the identity of “saviour”; practicality becomes his mask for mercy. |
| “I wonder why I could not kill him?” | Sadao’s last thought, watching the empty island (p. 46) | The whole story in one question: his inability to kill is the victory of training and humanity over the hatred of war. |
Reading with Insight — What Each Question Really Asks
The eight “Reading with Insight” questions close the chapter on Vistas p. 46. The table below is a revision map, not a set of model answers: it shows the angle of each question, the evidence to carry in memory, and a one-line answer skeleton so you can write the full answer yourself.
| Question (in brief) | What it really demands | Evidence to carry | Answer skeleton |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 — Hard choices between private individuals and citizens with national loyalty | Argue both sides before you conclude. | Sadao’s own reasoning at the beach (pp. 27–28); the unfinished report (p. 37); the escape plan (pp. 42–43) | The State claims the prisoner, but Sadao’s private duty as a doctor claims him first — and the story ends with the private choice winning, quietly and illegally. |
| Q2 — What made Hana sympathetic despite the servants’ defiance | Trace a character’s change through actions, not adjectives. | Yumi’s refusal (p. 30); Hana washing Tom herself; feeding him (p. 35); her repeated “What shall we do with him?” (p. 42) | Fear first, then compassion through action: caring for a helpless wounded boy changes Hana faster than any argument could. |
| Q3 — Why the soldier was reluctant to leave the doctor’s home | Read a character’s fear from inside his situation. | “Terror as unmistakable as an animal’s” (p. 38); he looks “barely seventeen” (p. 36); weak, with no safe alternative | Shelter is life for Tom: physical weakness and absolute terror make staying — however dangerous — less frightening than the sea or capture. |
| Q4 — What explains the General’s attitude: human consideration, lack of loyalty, dereliction or self-absorption | Judge between four readings and justify your choice. | “I thought of nothing but myself. In short, I forgot my promise” (p. 45); his counter-claim that it was “not lack of patriotism or dereliction of duty” (p. 45) | Self-absorption alone explains him: he is neither humane (he orders a killing) nor patriotic (he forgets the enemy entirely) — only obsessed with his own survival. |
| Q5 — What makes a human being rise above narrow prejudices | State the story’s moral argument and prove it. | Sadao’s trained hands; “I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it” (p. 36); his final question (p. 46) | Professional training becomes a channel for compassion: the habit of saving life overrides the habit of hating. |
| Q6 — Was the doctor’s final solution the best possible one? | Open-ended reasoning governed by the story’s constraints. | The alternatives: hand him over (he would certainly die, p. 27), kill him (the General’s plan), keep hiding (the servants’ departure and police risk, pp. 37–38) | On the story’s facts the escape is the best workable solution — it breaks no medical duty and removes the danger — though it is a compromise, not a clean victory. |
| Q7 — Similarity with “Birth” by A. J. Cronin | Compare two stories on a shared point. | Both doctors: Andrew Manson works against the odds to revive a stillborn baby in “Birth” (Snapshots, Class 11); Sadao operates on an enemy | In both, a doctor strains his professional skill to save a life that seems lost, and the story affirms the sanctity of life as the doctor’s final loyalty. |
| Q8 — A film or novel you have seen or read with a similar theme | Personal response — relevance plus a reason is enough. | Look for any work with: a war setting, a moral dilemma, someone helping an “enemy” | Name any genuine example and give one clear similarity — the theme, not the plot, is what the answer must match. |
Common Mistakes Students Make About The Enemy
These are the facts students misremember most often. Each row is a strict error → correction pair with the proof in the text.
| Mistake students write | Correct reading | Proof in the text |
|---|---|---|
| “The General sent assassins but they failed to kill Tom.” | The assassins were never sent; the General forgot his promise because he was absorbed in his own illness. | “I thought of nothing but myself. In short, I forgot my promise to you” (p. 45). |
| “Sadao saved Tom because he liked Americans.” | The text says the opposite: Tom’s face is “white and repulsive” to Sadao and he claims to care nothing for him — he saves him because his training will not let a man die. | “I care nothing for him” (p. 28); “white and repulsive” (p. 45); “I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it” (p. 36). |
| “Hana wanted to save the prisoner from the start.” | Hana first called for putting him back into the sea, and grew sympathetic only through caring for him. | “The kindest thing would be to put him back into the sea” (p. 28); she washes him (p. 30) and feeds him (p. 35) later. |
| “Tom rowed the boat across the sea to freedom.” | Tom rowed only to the nearby island, where he waited for a Korean fishing boat to pass and pick him up. | “You might be able to row to that little island… until you saw a Korean fishing boat pass by” (p. 43). |
| “Sadao reported Tom to the police.” | Sadao typed a report to the Chief of Police but never sent it; it stayed unfinished in a secret drawer. | “He opened a secret drawer of his desk and put the unfinished report into it” (p. 37). |
| “The servants left because they feared the General.” | They left because sheltering the white man seemed unpatriotic, and they feared Sadao would be condemned as a traitor. | “What will be their fate if their father is condemned as a traitor?” (p. 37). |
| “Yumi was just being disobedient.” | Yumi refused on grounds of race and social station, as much as stubbornness. | “I have never washed a white man… I am a poor person and it is not my business” (p. 30). |
Exam Notes — How to Write Complete Answers
This chapter’s own exercises are all of the “discuss”, “explain” and “compare” type, and every one of them can be answered with the same three-part move.
The CLAIM–EVIDENCE–EXPLANATION Method
- Claim: answer the question in the first sentence. “The General’s attitude is best explained as self-absorption, because…” — your first line should state the answer so directly that the rest of the paragraph only needs to prove it.
- Evidence: quote small. Pick a phrase, not a paragraph — “I thought of nothing but myself” (p. 45). A short quote inside quotation marks shows mastery of the text; a retold scene only shows you remember the gist.
- Explanation: two or three sentences connecting evidence to claim — what does this line show about the character, the theme, or the author’s purpose?
Tricks for Tricky Phrasings
- “Discuss” means argue, not list. State your position, concede the other side once, then return to your position with evidence. For Q1 that structure is built in: acknowledge the nation’s claim on a citizen, then show Sadao’s private code answering it.
- “With reference to” simply means quote. The question wants your argument anchored in lines from the story, with page numbers in parentheses.
- Comparison questions (Q7) work in two columns. On your rough page draw “Birth” vs “The Enemy” — rows for the doctor’s struggle, the stakes, and the outcome — then write one paragraph per column and end with the shared conclusion: both affirm the sanctity of life.
- Memorise evidence and claims, never model answers. If you know three good quotes per character and one per theme, you can write any answer fresh. A memorised paragraph collapses under the first question it does not fit.
Revision Recap — The Enemy in One Page
A 60-second scan of the whole chapter before you close the book.
| Element | One-line summary |
|---|---|
| Characters | Sadao — the surgeon whose training overrides nationalism; Hana — fear turning into compassionate action; Tom — the terrified, grateful prisoner who becomes a person; the General — self-absorbed power that forgets its own cruelty; the servants — patriotism, superstition and the social cost of mercy. |
| Central conflict | Professional duty versus national loyalty — save the enemy prisoner or hand him over. |
| Five themes | Professional duty vs national loyalty; humanity above prejudice; the dehumanising effects of war; the self-absorption of power; prejudice on both sides. |
| Three symbols | The fog (concealment); the island (halfway sanctuary); the scars and the black cloth (the signs of the enemy). |
| Three key quotes | “He is my enemy. All Americans are my enemy” (p. 28) · “I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it” (p. 36) · “I wonder why I could not kill him?” (p. 46) |
Memory Device — Sadao’s Three Refusals
The whole plot hangs from three refusals, one per act. First, Sadao refuses to let Tom die: he operates through the night (p. 31). Second, he refuses to hand Tom over: he types the police report and buries it unfinished in a secret drawer (p. 37).
Third, he refuses to let the General’s assassins kill Tom: he waits three nights, then stages the escape to the island (pp. 42–43). Each refusal is more active than the last — saving a life, hiding a crime, engineering a getaway — and together they map the entire story.
Misconception Autopsy — Whose Enemy?
The title sounds like it names the American, but the final line refuses that reading. Sadao saved Tom, hid him from the police and smuggled him out — all for a man whose face he himself calls “white and repulsive” (p. 45). If the American were truly the enemy, Sadao’s behaviour would be inexplicable.
The story’s real answer is that the enemy is the hatred and prejudice war manufactures — the force that makes Yumi refuse to wash a wounded boy, that makes the servants abandon their family, and that leaves Sadao honestly unable to say why he could not kill.
The man on the beach is never the enemy; the war that made him one is.
If you are revising the whole book, the sibling Vistas chapters The Third Level, Journey to the End of the Earth and On the Face of It are covered in the Class 12 English notes hub, reachable from the Class 12 revision set inside the CBSE notes library.
FAQs on The Enemy
Who is the real enemy in the story The Enemy?
The real enemy is not Tom — it is the hatred and prejudice that war manufactures. The evidence is Sadao’s own ending: he saves, hides and ships out a man whose face he finds “white and repulsive” (p. 45), and his final line — “I wonder why I could not kill him?”
(p. 46) — admits that the label “enemy” lost all power over his hands.
Why does Dr Sadao save the American soldier even though he is his enemy?
Not out of any liking for Tom — Sadao repeats that he cares nothing for the man (p. 28). He saves him because his professional training will not allow him to let a man die: “I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it” (p. 36).
His hands act before his reason catches up, and the hidden police report (p. 37) shows the same instinct continuing after the operation.
Why do the servants leave Dr Sadao’s house?
They leave because they see the rescue as unpatriotic and superstitiously dangerous. The gardener fears that the gun and the sea will take revenge (p. 30), Yumi grieves that the master may be “condemned as a traitor” (p. 37), and all of them believe the couple’s years in America made them forget their country.
They return only once the foreigner is gone (p. 44).
Did the General really send assassins to kill Tom?
No — he never sent them. He promised his private assassins (p. 40), Sadao waited three nights, and no one came. After his own operation the General confesses that he forgot the promise because he “thought of nothing but myself” (p. 45).
How does Tom finally escape from Japan?
Sadao prepares his boat with food, bottled water, quilts and a flashlight, and Tom rows to a small uninhabited island off the coast (p. 43). He waits there — signalling once at sunset if he is safe, twice if food runs out — until a Korean fishing boat passes and picks him up (pp. 43–44).
The black cloth wrapped over his blond head hides the visible sign of the enemy during the crossing.
What is the similarity between The Enemy and the story Birth?
Both centre on a doctor who stretches his professional skill to preserve a life that seems lost — Andrew Manson in “Birth” (Snapshots, Class 11) works desperately to revive a stillborn baby, and Sadao operates on a wounded enemy who would otherwise die. In both stories, the doctor’s duty to life wins over every other consideration.
Reference: NCERT Class 12 English Vistas textbook, chapter The Enemy.
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