The Enemy | CBSE Class 12 English Notes

This note covers Pearl S. Buck’s The Enemy, its author and setting, the sequence of events, the characters’ conflicting duties, the themes of humanity and prejudice, the ending, key quotations, difficult vocabulary, and questions with model answers.

What should we know about the author, text and setting?

Who wrote the story, and what is its central situation?

Pearl S. Buck wrote The Enemy. The story places a Japanese doctor, Dr Sadao Hoki, in a wartime situation where saving a helpless person brings him into conflict with loyalty to his country. The injured man is an escaped American prisoner.

A prisoner of war is someone captured and held by the opposing side during war. Here, the prisoner’s nationality makes him an enemy, while his wounds make him a patient. These two identities create the central problem for Sadao and his wife, Hana.

How does the setting prepare the conflict?

Sadao’s stone house stands on rocks above a narrow beach on the Japanese coast. He played there as a boy. His father encouraged him to think about Japan’s future and devoted great care to his education.

Sadao went to America at twenty-two to study medicine and surgery and returned at thirty. He became a famous surgeon, a doctor who performs operations, and a scientist. His American training later enables him to save a man whom wartime loyalties identify as an enemy.

He remains in Japan partly because he is perfecting a discovery intended to make wounds entirely clean. There is also some slight danger that the old General may need an operation. Sadao is being kept available for that possibility.

The house brings public conflict into private life. A quiet evening with Hana becomes a crisis affecting their children, servants and security. The nearby sea first delivers the wounded man and later offers a possible route away from the danger surrounding the household.

What happens in the story, section by section?

How is the wounded stranger discovered?

Sadao and Hana stand outside their house as mist gathers. They see a man emerge from the sea, stagger, crawl and collapse. Sadao first suggests that he may be a fisherman washed from a boat. They go down to help him.

The man is unconscious, badly injured and wearing wet rags. A gunshot wound in his lower back has reopened after contact with a rock. Sadao’s trained hands begin stopping the bleeding even while he wonders what they should do.

He uses sea moss to pack the wound. The lettering on the stranger’s cap identifies him with the United States Navy, the American naval service. Sadao and Hana recognise him as an escaped prisoner of war. The stranger’s injuries make their decision urgent.

Why do they carry an enemy into their home?

Sadao says that sheltering him would expose them to arrest, while handing him over in his condition would mean death. Both discuss putting him back into the sea, but neither can carry out that proposal.

Hana concludes that they must take him indoors. They agree that they will eventually give him to the police, partly to protect the children and Sadao’s position. They carry him into the unused room that belonged to Sadao’s father.

The prisoner needs washing, but Yumi, the servant who cares for the children, refuses to wash him. Hana becomes angry at her refusal and cleans his upper body herself. Sadao brings his instruments and prepares to operate.

How do Sadao and Hana save the prisoner?

Hana has never assisted at an operation. The sight makes her sick, and she leaves to vomit. She returns, however, and helps Sadao with the anaesthetic, a substance used to prevent the patient from feeling pain during an operation.

Watching the prisoner, Hana wonders about stories of cruelty towards captives. She notices scars on his neck and hopes he has not been tortured. Their cause remains unexplained. Sadao is absorbed in locating the bullet dangerously near the kidney.

He removes the bullet, watches the patient’s weak pulse and gives an injection after telling Hana to stop the anaesthetic. The pulse strengthens. Although Sadao continues to resist the idea of wanting an enemy to live, his actions preserve the man’s life.

What difficulties follow the operation?

Hana feeds and comforts the frightened patient because the servants will not enter his room. The young man later tells her that his name is Tom. She remains distant, even though she continues caring for him.

The servants believe their employers’ years in America have weakened their loyalty to Japan. Sadao rejects this accusation. He explains that his training prevents him from letting someone die when he can help. Nevertheless, neither he nor Hana resolves the prisoner’s future.

Sadao begins a report to the Chief of police, then leaves it unfinished in a secret drawer. Later, the servants leave together. Hana takes on the household work, and Sadao helps with the children. Their decision now carries a daily domestic cost.

What does the General promise?

An official messenger frightens Hana, who thinks Sadao is about to be arrested. Instead, the messenger summons him because the General is in pain. Distressed by Hana’s fear, Sadao decides that he must remove the prisoner from the house.

He tells the General about the American. The General wants to keep Sadao safe because he trusts his surgical skill and may need him. He offers to send private assassins, people employed to kill secretly, to murder the prisoner and remove the body.

Sadao accepts the arrangement and does not tell Hana. For three nights he waits uneasily, listening for signs that the killers have come. Each morning the prisoner is still alive. Eventually Sadao decides that he cannot endure another night of this strain.

How does Sadao arrange the departure?

Sadao proposes that Tom row to a nearby uninhabited island and wait for a Korean fishing boat. The island is submerged during storms, but this is not the storm season. Its position and the passing fishing boats make it a possible refuge.

He prepares a boat with food, bottled water and two quilts. He gives Tom Japanese clothing, covers his blond head with a black cloth and supplies a torch. He also checks the wound, temperature, heart and pulse before the departure.

Tom must signal at sunset: two flashes if food runs out before he catches a boat, one if he is all right but still there. Sadao warns him against signalling in darkness or lighting a fire, since either could attract attention.

What does the ending reveal?

After operating on the General, Sadao eventually tells him that the prisoner has escaped. The General admits that suffering and concern for himself made him forget the promised killing. He anxiously asks Sadao to recognise that this was not a failure of patriotism.

Sadao realises that the General’s dependence and embarrassment protect him. Later he sees no signal from the island. He takes the prisoner’s departure as his reward and assumes him safe. No scene of rescue aboard a fishing boat is shown.

Finally, Sadao remembers Americans he knew, including people who were kind to him despite his dislike of them. He still thinks of Tom with racial repulsion, yet wonders why he could not kill him. The story closes with his unresolved question.

Why is Sadao’s conflict more complicated than a simple choice?

Which duties pull him in different directions?

Sadao faces a moral dilemma, a difficult choice between competing duties or values. As a Japanese citizen, he considers the American an enemy who should be reported. As a doctor, he has been trained to prevent an avoidable death.

As a husband and father, he must also consider his household. Hana fears arrest, the servants fear the consequences for the children, and the prisoner’s continued presence increases the pressure. Helping the patient cannot be separated from these risks.

His first response on the beach is revealing. Before he has settled what he ought to do politically, his hands are already stopping the bleeding. Professional habits act faster than his conscious attempt to decide the stranger’s fate.

Does medical duty remove his prejudice?

Prejudice means judging people through an existing bias rather than treating them simply as individuals. Sadao explicitly dislikes Americans. Even during the operation, he resists the thought that he wants this particular patient to survive.

His actions nevertheless contradict that hostility. While absorbed in surgery, he addresses the enemy as he habitually addresses patients. His anatomical knowledge, meaning his knowledge of the body’s structure, directs him towards careful treatment rather than national distinctions.

The operation does not settle everything. Sadao drafts but withholds a police report, accepts the General’s murder plan, and then prepares Tom’s escape. These changes prevent an interpretation in which he makes one clear decision and remains certain throughout.

What does his final action establish?

Preparing the boat extends care beyond surgical treatment. Sadao considers food, water, clothing, concealment and communication. This practical attention gives Tom a chance to survive outside the home, while ending the danger and anxiety caused by his presence there.

Sadao says that keeping Tom is inconvenient, and he tells himself that the nightly strain is intolerable. Those explanations belong to his conflicted thinking. The ethical significance, or moral importance, of his action lies in the life it protects despite his continuing hostility.

How does Hana show courage without becoming free of fear?

How does she respond to immediate suffering?

Hana’s compassion is practical and reluctant. She initially agrees that returning the stranger to the sea would be safest, but she cannot do it. When Yumi refuses to wash him, Hana recognises that the person before her is wounded and helpless.

She does not begin by liking him. She worries about touching him, the cleanliness of the room and the servants’ reaction. Yet she washes him and covers him to prevent chilling. Her conduct shows concern acting alongside discomfort.

During the operation, she becomes physically sick. Her return matters because courage here means continuing a necessary action despite fear and distress. She helps with the anaesthetic under Sadao’s instructions, although she has never done this before.

What does she notice that others avoid discussing?

Hana connects rumours about suffering prisoners with her knowledge that General Takima treats his wife cruelly. She wonders whether such a man would also abuse someone powerless in captivity. This is her reflection, not proof about Tom’s individual experience.

The scars on Tom’s neck deepen her anxiety. She hopes he has not been tortured. Her thoughts make the possibility of cruelty emotionally present, but the story does not identify who caused the scars or explain how they were made.

How does the crisis affect her household role?

Hana must face the servants’ open disapproval and their departure. She pays and thanks them with outward dignity, although she is frightened. Yumi’s concern for the baby does not erase the disagreement over sheltering the prisoner.

Hana then manages unfamiliar household labour. When the official messenger arrives, fear of arrest overwhelms her. Her distress helps bring Sadao to the decision that Tom cannot remain indefinitely. She is an active participant whose work and anxiety sustain the story’s moral conflict.

What do the other characters reveal about loyalty and fear?

How is Tom more than the label of enemy?

Tom first appears as an unconscious body requiring urgent treatment. As he recovers, he becomes a frightened young man who asks what will happen to him, offers his name and thanks the doctor for saving him.

His youth must be described carefully. Early on, Sadao thinks he is perhaps not yet twenty-five; later, his weakened appearance makes him look barely seventeen. Neither description establishes an exact age. They emphasise the impression of vulnerability.

Tom’s gratitude grows as his health returns, but leaving shelter still frightens him. His hesitant response to the island plan is understandable: recovery does not remove the danger outside. He eventually accepts the plan and recognises that Sadao is saving him again.

What motivates the General?

The old General protects Sadao because he trusts his medical skill and fears needing an operation without him. His willingness to arrange Tom’s killing shows that preserving the prisoner is not his purpose. His concern centres on his own survival.

His forgotten promise exposes self-absorption, excessive attention to oneself. He admits that he thought of nothing but himself while suffering. He then worries about how his failure could be interpreted and seeks Sadao’s reassurance about his loyalty.

Why do the servants leave?

The gardener believes that saving the wounded man may invite revenge from the forces that injured him. His fear is superstitious: he treats the gun and sea as if they could punish the household for interfering.

The cook accuses Sadao of excessive pride in his ability to save life. Yumi refuses to wash the stranger and worries that the children may suffer if their father is condemned as a traitor, meaning someone regarded as betraying the country.

The servants’ departure is not evidence that they lack every form of affection. Yumi cries for the children and offers to return if the baby needs her. Their loyalty to the family exists beside a strong rejection of its treatment of the American.

Why does Sadao’s father matter?

Although dead before the main events, Sadao’s father shapes his son’s education, national ambitions and views about marriage. His preference for Japanese customs survives in the room where the prisoner is placed. The setting brings inherited loyalties into contact with an unwelcome foreign patient.

What themes and messages emerge from the conflict?

Humanity can act across national boundaries

Humanity here means recognising and responding to another person’s suffering. Tom’s wounds do not change when his nationality becomes known. Sadao’s treatment and Hana’s nursing show that the need for help can remain morally compelling even when the sufferer belongs to an enemy nation.

The story does not make this response effortless. Both characters fear the consequences and dislike the prisoner. Their help therefore challenges the assumption that compassion requires friendship or emotional warmth before it can begin.

Professional duty may conflict with public expectations

Professional duty means the responsibility attached to a person’s trained role. Sadao explains that he has learned not to let a man die if he can prevent it. The servants cannot accept this explanation as a sufficient reason to save an enemy.

His skill also connects the two patients, Tom and the General. The same doctor preserves the life of the helpless foreigner and the powerful Japanese official. The contrast exposes how national status and social power influence the value others place on a life.

Prejudice and compassionate action can coexist

Sadao recalls difficulty finding accommodation in America because he was Japanese. Yet he also judges Americans contemptuously, even when remembering kindness. The story presents prejudice operating in more than one direction rather than belonging exclusively to one national group.

His former landlady nursed him through influenza, but he struggled to feel grateful because he found her repulsive. That memory parallels his present difficulty: kindness can occur between people whose opinions and feelings remain troubled by contempt.

Power does not guarantee moral responsibility

The General can promise secret murder and protect Sadao from arrest. However, his decisions revolve around his own medical need. His position gives him power over others without producing a corresponding concern for Tom’s suffering.

By contrast, Hana’s role offers little protection from the household consequences. She must nurse the prisoner, face the servants and continue working after they leave. This contrast makes responsibility visible through ordinary actions as well as dramatic decisions.

The message remains a question rather than a slogan

The ending invites reflection on why Sadao’s conduct exceeds his professed hatred. It supports the view that immediate human need can interrupt inherited prejudice and wartime hostility. It does not show every prejudice disappearing or every danger being permanently resolved.

Compassion, sympathetic concern expressed through help, emerges as a difficult practice. Washing, operating, feeding, waiting and preparing supplies matter because they protect a particular person. The story’s moral force comes from these actions and the costs attached to them.

How do language, contrasts and the ending shape meaning?

How does the title change as the story develops?

The title The Enemy initially seems to identify the American prisoner straightforwardly. Wartime nationality explains why he is unwelcome. As readers see his wounds, fear and gratitude, however, the label becomes inadequate as a complete account of who he is.

This does not mean that the war disappears. Rather, the title invites a distinction between an official category and a person directly encountered. Sadao must act towards an injured individual while remaining conscious of the national relationship between them.

Where does irony appear?

Irony is a meaningful contrast between what is expected or claimed and what actually occurs. The General needs Sadao’s life-saving skill but proposes using secret killers to resolve the difficulty created by that very skill.

The prisoner survives the promised assassination because the General forgets, not because the General develops compassion. Sadao’s eventual security also rests partly on the official’s embarrassment. These contrasts complicate any claim that authority represents clear moral judgement.

How do narrative perspective and suspense work?

A third-person narrator tells events using characters’ names and pronouns such as he and she. The narration gives access to Sadao’s and Hana’s thoughts, allowing readers to see the difference between their hostile judgements and their caring actions.

Suspense, uncertainty about what will happen next, grows during the nights of waiting. Ordinary sounds in the garden may announce the assassins. Morning repeatedly reveals that Tom is alive, postponing the expected event and increasing Sadao’s strain.

The final absence of a torch signal suggests that Tom has left the island. His safety is expressed through Sadao’s assumption, not a narrated rescue. The closing question then moves attention from the prisoner’s departure to the doctor’s inability to explain his own mercy.

Which key quotations illuminate the characters’ choices?

How does Hana recognise the wounded stranger?

“Is this anything but a man?”

Speaker and context: Hana, after Yumi refuses to wash the prisoner. The question directs attention to his humanity rather than nationality. It comes during anger at Yumi, so it should not be treated as proof that Hana has calmly resolved all her doubts.

How does Sadao’s language change during surgery?

“My friend”

Speaker and context: Sadao, addressing the unconscious patient while operating. This is his habitual form of address to patients. In professional concentration he momentarily forgets the enemy label, although his hostility returns elsewhere.

How does the General explain his failure?

“I thought of nothing but myself.”

Speaker and context: the General, explaining why he forgot to arrange the killing. The admission supports an interpretation centred on self-absorption. It does not support the claim that he deliberately spared the prisoner out of kindness.

What question closes Sadao’s reflection?

“I wonder why I could not kill him?”

Speaker and context: Sadao, in his final thoughts after remembering Americans he has known. The question leaves his motives open to examination. His actions have saved Tom, but he has not reached a settled explanation that removes his prejudices.

How can answers connect evidence with interpretation?

How should a character judgement be supported?

A convincing answer links a claim to a specific action, then explains what that action reveals. To describe Hana as courageous, connect her return after vomiting with her continued assistance. Her fear strengthens this judgement because she acts despite distress.

To describe the General as self-interested, connect his need for Sadao with his protection of the doctor. Then distinguish that motive from concern for Tom. His proposed assassination and later confession support this reading without requiring an invented explanation.

Which distinctions prevent inaccurate answers?

Keep fact and inference separate. A fact is explicitly presented; an inference is a conclusion drawn from evidence. Tom’s scars are presented, but torture is Hana’s anxious possibility. The missing signal is presented, but a witnessed rescue is not.

Keep stages of the conflict separate as well. Sadao first saves the wounded man, later accepts the General’s plan, and finally enables departure. Explaining this movement gives a fuller answer than calling him either wholly compassionate or wholly hostile.

An answer about the final solution can recognise both its practical value and its uncertainty. The boat, supplies and signalling instructions give Tom a chance of survival while ending his stay. They do not establish every later event in his life.

Glossary

• Prisoner of war — A person captured and held by the opposing side during a war.
• Surgeon — A doctor trained to treat injuries or illnesses by performing operations.
• Anaesthetic — A substance used to prevent the patient from feeling pain during an operation.
• Moral dilemma — A difficult choice involving competing duties, values or ideas of right conduct.
• Prejudice — An existing bias that shapes judgement before fair consideration of an individual.
• Assassin — A person employed or assigned to kill someone secretly.
• Self-absorption — Excessive concern with oneself that limits attention to other people or responsibilities.
• Traitor — Someone regarded as betraying the country or group to which loyalty is owed.
• Compassion — Sympathetic concern for another person’s suffering, expressed here through practical help.
• Irony — A meaningful contrast between an expectation or claim and what actually happens.
• Suspense — Uncertainty about a coming event that keeps a reader anxious or interested.
• Inference — A conclusion reached from available evidence rather than something explicitly stated.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: Sadao is in Japan solely because the General needs him. Correct: His work on a discovery to make wounds entirely clean is also a reason for keeping him from service abroad.
• Misconception: Hana readily likes and welcomes Tom. Correct: She fears and dislikes him but repeatedly helps him because he is wounded, helpless and dependent on their care.
• Misconception: The General deliberately forgets the assassins to save Tom. Correct: He admits that his suffering and absorption in himself made him forget his promise.
• Misconception: Tom is definitely seventeen. Correct: He looks barely seventeen at one moment; earlier Sadao thinks he is perhaps not yet twenty-five. His exact age is not established.
• Misconception: The scars prove that a named person tortured Tom. Correct: Hana fears possible torture, but the cause of the scars and the person responsible remain unexplained.
• Misconception: Sadao sends his written police report. Correct: He puts the unfinished report away. Later he discusses the prisoner with the General.
• Misconception: The story shows Tom reaching America and Sadao abandoning prejudice. Correct: Sadao assumes Tom is safe when no signal appears from the island; his final thoughts still contain racial hostility.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Sadao remains in Japan while perfecting a discovery to make wounds entirely clean; there is also some slight danger that the old General may need an operation. Identify the two reasons for his remaining in Japan. [2 marks]

1. His scientific work is still in progress: he is perfecting a discovery intended to make wounds entirely clean.
2. He is also being kept available because there is some slight danger that the General may require an operation.

Q2. Yumi refuses to wash the wounded prisoner. Hana washes him herself; although the operation makes her vomit, she returns to assist. What two qualities do these actions reveal in Hana? [2 marks]

1. She shows practical compassion by personally washing a helpless patient when Yumi refuses to help.
2. She shows courage and persistence by returning to assist despite the physical distress caused by watching the operation.

Q3. Sadao considers Americans enemies, but his hands stop the stranger’s bleeding; he operates and later explains that his training prevents him from letting a man die if he can help. Explain his conflict in three points. [3 marks]

1. His wartime loyalty makes him regard the American as an enemy, creating resistance to helping someone from the opposing nation.
2. His immediate effort to stop the bleeding shows that his trained response to an injured person begins before he resolves that hostility.
3. The operation and his explanation reveal a competing professional duty: preventing an avoidable death. His medical conduct therefore conflicts with his national judgement of the patient.

Q4. The General protects Sadao because he may need his surgical skill, proposes sending assassins to kill Tom, forgets because of his own suffering, and later seeks reassurance about his loyalty. Analyse his motives in four points. [4 marks]

1. His protection of Sadao is motivated by dependence on a doctor whose skill he may need for his own survival.
2. The proposed killing shows that he does not extend the same protective concern to the helpless American prisoner.
3. Forgetting the plan because of his suffering reveals self-absorption, rather than a deliberate compassionate decision to spare Tom.
4. His request for reassurance shows anxiety about how his conduct might be judged. Together, these actions place personal security ahead of consistent responsibility.

Q5. Sheltering Tom risks the household’s safety. Sadao stops Tom’s bleeding, operates with Hana’s help, withholds an unfinished police report, accepts the General’s assassination proposal, waits anxiously for three nights, and finally supplies a boat for Tom’s departure. Explain in six points why his conduct resists a simple heroic description. [6 marks]

1. Stopping the bleeding shows an immediate life-saving response, but it begins before Sadao has settled what he should do about the prisoner.
2. Operating with Hana’s help confirms a serious commitment to treatment and survival, even within a situation that exposes the household to danger.
3. Withholding the unfinished police report suggests hesitation. He does not straightforwardly carry out the reporting action that he has begun.
4. Accepting the assassination proposal complicates his protective role because he agrees to a plan that would destroy the life he has saved.
5. His anxious waiting over three nights reveals that transferring the problem to others has not given him peace or moral certainty.
6. Providing a boat finally creates a chance of escape. His conduct develops through contradictions rather than expressing one unchanging, uncomplicated heroic purpose.

Q6. To get the recovering Tom out of his house, Sadao gives him a boat, food, water, quilts, Japanese clothes and a torch, and directs him to an island to await a Korean fishing boat. Two sunset flashes mean food has run out; one means he is all right but still there. Later no signal appears, and Sadao assumes him safe. Evaluate this solution and its limits in five points. [5 marks]

1. The plan ends Tom’s continued stay in the house while giving him a possible way to survive beyond its protection.
2. The boat and supplies meet immediate practical needs. Food, water, quilts and clothing make the proposed refuge more usable for a recovering man.
3. The torch signals maintain a limited connection with Sadao, distinguishing urgent shortage of food from continued presence without that shortage.
4. Waiting for a Korean fishing boat provides a possible next step, but the plan still depends on an opportunity arriving.
5. The absent signal leads Sadao to assume safety. It does not give readers a witnessed rescue, so the conclusion must retain that distinction.

Q7. Hana hears contradicted rumours about prisoners’ suffering, notices red scars on Tom’s neck and hopes he has not been tortured. What can be concluded, and what remains uncertain? Give three points. [3 marks]

1. The scars are an observed feature of Tom’s body, so an answer may state that Hana notices them without qualification.
2. The rumours and scars lead Hana to fear possible torture, showing her concern for the suffering of a vulnerable prisoner.
3. The evidence does not establish how the scars were caused or who caused them. An answer must preserve the difference between Hana’s fear and a confirmed event.

Q8. Sadao remembers racial prejudice against him in America, recalls a landlady who nursed him despite his dislike of her, saves Tom, and still thinks of him with repulsion. Explain what these details suggest about prejudice and kindness. [4 marks]

1. Sadao’s experience in America shows him suffering from racial prejudice, making the effects of hostile national judgements personally familiar.
2. His continuing dislike of the landlady despite her nursing shows that receiving kindness does not automatically remove his own bias.
3. Saving Tom while still feeling repulsion shows that compassionate conduct can occur before a person’s feelings have become generous or unprejudiced.
4. Together, the details challenge a simple division between kind people and prejudiced people: actions and attitudes can remain in tension within one character.

Key takeaways

• Sadao’s central conflict places medical responsibility beside national loyalty and concern for the safety of his household.
• Hana’s help is courageous because she continues washing, assisting and nursing despite fear, discomfort and opposition.
• The servants’ refusal expresses hostility towards the enemy, but Yumi’s attachment to the children complicates their portrayal.
• The General protects Sadao through self-interest and forgets the promised killing because he is absorbed in his own suffering.
• Sadao’s decisions change from treatment and postponed reporting to acceptance of assassination and finally preparation for escape.
• The story distinguishes compassionate action from complete freedom from prejudice; Sadao’s final thoughts retain that tension.
• Tom’s exact age, the origin of his scars and the details of his eventual rescue remain unconfirmed.
• The ending makes the prisoner’s departure a source of reward for Sadao while leaving his deepest motives open to reflection.

Test yourself

Why does the cap matter when Sadao examines the stranger?

Its faint United States Navy lettering identifies the man as an American sailor and helps establish his enemy status.

What does Sadao do with the police report?

He leaves the report unfinished and places it in a secret drawer instead of sending it.

Why is Hana frightened by the official messenger?

She thinks he has come to arrest Sadao, but he has actually come to summon him to the suffering General.

What does Yumi’s offer after leaving reveal?

Her offer to return if the baby needs her shows affection for the children despite her rejection of sheltering the prisoner.

Why should the General’s forgetfulness not be called mercy?

He admits that he was absorbed in his own suffering, rather than deliberately deciding to protect the prisoner’s life.

What does one sunset flash from the island mean?

It means that Tom is all right but remains on the island, still waiting for a boat.

What does the absence of a signal establish at the end?

Sadao understands that Tom has left the island and assumes him safe; the story does not show his rescue directly.

Why is Sadao’s final question significant?

It reveals his inability to explain why he saved an enemy even though his hostile feelings have not entirely disappeared.