War Ii Essay, Research Paper
The Atomic Bomb and its Effects on Post-World War II American LiteratureRob GioielliMrs.
McFarlanSenior English6 Dec. 1994Gioielli 1Rob GioielliMrs. McFarlanSenior English 6 Dec.
1994Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky . Mr. Tanimoto has a distinct
recollection that it traveled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed
like a sheet of sun. ?John Hersey, from Hiroshima, pp.8 On August 6, 1945, the world
changed forever. On that day the United States of America detonated an atomic bomb over the
city of Hiroshima. Never before had mankind seen anything like. Here was something that
was slightly bigger than an ordinary bomb, yet could cause infinitely more destruction. It
could rip through walls and tear down houses like the devils wrecking ball. In Hiroshima it
killed 100,000 people, most non-military civilians. Three days later in Nagasaki it killed
roughly 40,000 . The immediate effects of these bombings were simple. The Japanese
government surrendered, unconditionally, to the United States. The rest of the world
rejoiced as the most destructive war in the history of mankind came to an end . All while
the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki tried to piece together what was left of their
lives, families and homes. Over the course of the next forty years, these two bombings,
and the nuclear arms race that followed them, would come to have a direct or indirect
effect on almost every man, woman and child on this Earth, including people in the United
States. The atomic bomb would penetrate every fabric of American existence. From our
politics to our educational system. Our industry and our art. Historians have gone so
far as to call this period in our history the ?atomic age? for the way it has shaped and
guided world politics, relations and culture. The entire history behind the bomb itself is
rooted in Twentieth Century physics. At the time of the bombing the science of physics had
been undergoing a revolution for the past thirty-odd years. Scientists now had a clear
picture of what the atomic world was like. They new the structure and particle makeup of
atoms, as well as how they behaved. During the 1930?s it became apparent that there was a
immense amount of energy that would be released atoms of Gioielli 2certain elements were
split, or taken apart. Scientists began to realize that if harnessed, this energy could be
something of a magnitude not before seen to human eyes. They also saw that this energy
could possibly be harnessed into a weapon of amazing power. And with the advent of World
War Two, this became an ever increasing concern. In the early fall of 1939, the same time
that the Germans invaded Poland, President Roosevelt received a letter from Albert Einstein,
informing him about the certain possibilities of creating a controlled nuclear chain
reaction, and that harnessing such a reaction could produce a bomb of formidable strength.
He wrote: This new phenomena would lead also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is
conceivable, though much less certain-that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus
be constructed (Clark 556-557).The letter goes on to encourage the president to increase
government and military involvement in such experiments, and to encourage the experimental
work of the scientists with the allocation of funds, facilities and equipment that might be
necessary. This letter ultimately led to the Manhattan Project, the effort that involved
billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people to produce the atomic bomb. During the
time after the war, until just recently the American psyche has been branded with the threat
of a nuclear holocaust. Here was something so powerful, yet so diminutive. A bomb that
could obliterate our nations capital, and that was as big as somebodies backyard grill. For
the first time in the history of human existence here was something capable of wiping us off
the face of the Earth. And most people had no control over that destiny. It seemed like
peoples lives, the life of everything on this planet, was resting in the hands of a couple
men in Northern Virginia and some guys over in Russia. The atomic bomb and the amazing
power it held over us had a tremendous influence on American Culture, including a profound
effect on American Literature. After the war, the first real piece of literature about the
bombings came in 1946. The work Hiroshima, by Jon Hersey, from which the opening quote is
taken, first appeared as a long article in the New Yorker, then shortly after in book form.
The book is a non-fiction account of the bombing of Hiroshima and the immediate aftermath.
It is told from the point-of-view of six hibakusha, or ?survivors? of the atomic blast. In
four chapters Hersey traces how the these people survived the blast, and what they did in
following weeks and months to pull their lives together Gioielli 3and save their families.
The book takes on a tone of sympathy and of miraculous survival ?that these people were
lucky enough to survive the blast. He focuses not on the suffering of the victims but on
their courage (Stone, 7). The following passage from the first chapter shows this:A hundred
thousand people were killed by the bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still
wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of the counts many small items of
chance or volition?a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar
instead of the next?that spared him. And each that in the act of survival he lived a dozen
lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew
anything (4). Hersey was attempting to chronicle what had happened at Hiroshima, and to
do so fairly. And in emphasizing the survival instead of the suffering he does not make his
book anti-American or something that condemns the dropping of the bomb. He simply gives
these peoples accounts of how they survived in a tone that is more journalistic than
sensationalistic. The book empathizes with their plight while it also gives an American
explanation for the bombing (Stone, 7). That it was an act of war to end the war as quickly
and as easily as possible, and to save more lives in the long run. Hersey did all this to
provide what he considered an evenhanded portrayal of the event, but he also did not want to
cause much controversy. Although it could be criticized for not giving a more detailed
account of the suffering that occurred, and that it reads more like a history book than a
piece of literature, Hersey?s book was the first of its kind when it was published. Up
until then all accounts of the Hiroshima bombing writings about it took the slant that
Japanese had ?deserved what we had given them?, and that we were good people for doing so.
These accounts were extremely prejudicial and racist. (Stone, 4) Hersey was the first to
take the point of view of those who had actually experienced the event. And his work was
the transition between works that glorified the dropping of the atomic bomb, to those that
focused on its amazing destructive powers, and what they could do to our world. During the
period immediately after the war, not much information was available to general public
concerning what kind of destruction the atomic bombs had actually caused in Japan. But
starting with Hersey?s book and continuing with other non-fiction works, such as David
Bradley’s No Place To Hide, which concerned the Bikini Island nuclear tests, Americans
really began to get a picture of the awesome power and destructiveness of nuclear weapons.
They saw that these really Gioielli 4were doomsday devices. Weapons that could change
everything in an instant, and turn things into nothing in a moment. It was this realization
that had a startling effect on American culture and literature. Some Americans began to say
?At any time we could all be shadows in the blast wave, so what?s the point??. This
viewpoint manifested itself in literature in something called the ?apocalyptic temper?; an
attitude or a tone dealing with a forthcoming end to the world. Also, many people,
because of this realization of our impending death, were beginning to say that maybe their
was something inherently wrong with all of this. That nuclear weapons are dangerous to
everyone, no matter what your political views or where you live, and that we should do away
with all of them. They have no value to society and should be destroyed. This apocalyptic
temper and social activism was effected greatly in the early Sixties by the Cuban Missile
Crisis. When Americans saw, on television, that they could be under nuclear attack in under
twenty minutes, a new anxiety about the cold war surfaced that had not been present since
the days of McCarthy. And this new anxiety was evidenced in works that took on a much more
satirical tone. And one of the works that shows this satiric apocalyptic temper and
cynicism is Kurt Vonnegut’s Cats Cradle. Vonnegut, considered by many to be one of Americas
foremost living authors, was himself a veteran of World War Two. He, as a prisoner of war,
was one of the few survivors of the fire-bombing of Dresden. In Dresden he saw what many
believe was a more horrible tragedy than Hiroshima. The allied bombs destroyed the entire
city and killed as many people, if not more, than were killed in Hiroshima. He would
eventually write about this experience in the semi-autobiographical Slaughterhouse-Five.
This novel, like Cats Cradle, takes a very strong anti-war stance. But along with being an
Anti-war book, Cats Cradle is an excellent satire of the Atomic Age. It is essentially the
story of one man, an author by the name of John (or Jonah) and the research he is doing for
a book on the day the bomb exploded in Hiroshima. This involves him with members of the Dr.
Felix Hoenikker family?the genius who helped build the bomb?and their adventures. In the
book Vonnegut paints an imaginary world where things might not seem to make any Gioielli
5sense. But there is in fact an amazing amount of symbolism, as well as satire. Dr.
Hoenikker is an extremely eccentric scientist who spends most of his time in the lab at his
company. He is interested in very few things, his children not among them. His children
are almost afraid of him. One of the few times he does try to play with his children is
when he tries to teach the game of cats cradle to his youngest son, Newt. When he is trying
to show newt the game Newt gets very confused. In the book, this is what Newt remembered of
the incident:?And then he sang, ?Rockabye catsy, in the tree top?;he sang, ? when the wind
blows, the cray-dull will fall.
367
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