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    A Study Guide for John Hersey's "Hiroshima"
    A Study Guide for John Hersey's "Hiroshima"
    A Study Guide for John Hersey's "Hiroshima"
    Ebook34 pages27 minutes

    A Study Guide for John Hersey's "Hiroshima"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A study guide for John Hersey's "Hiroshima", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literary themes for Students: War and Peace series. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literary themes for Students: War and Peace for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateMay 10, 2016
    ISBN9781535826594
    A Study Guide for John Hersey's "Hiroshima"

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      A Study Guide for John Hersey's "Hiroshima" - Gale

      1

      Hiroshima

      John Hersey

      1946

      Introduction

      Hiroshima is nonfiction, portraying the stories of six people who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. These survivors, six people from all walks of life, share their experiences from the moments after the bomb dropped to forty years after that dreadful day.

      The first military use of an atomic bomb caused immense human suffering. The United States used its newly developed atomic bomb against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force an end to the lingering war with Japan. This tactic proved as horrifying as it was decisive. In Hiroshima, the bomb killed more than one hundred thousand people immediately and wounded one hundred thousand more. Most of the victims were civilians. Hersey's account describes the graphic results of nuclear warfare and reports the grim ordeal of the survivors.

      In addition to its terrifying content, the work cultivates a new journalistic technique. Hersey tells the stories of six survivors in separate, alternating sections, using suspense, characterization, and plot in such a way that the work as a whole feels more like a novel than nonfiction. The events of the narrative are a reconstruction of what Hersey, working as a reporter, discovered through interviews with survivors of the blast.

      Hersey originally conceived of Hiroshima as a four-part article for the New Yorker magazine. However, upon reading it, the magazine's editors felt that the material would be best presented in an uninterrupted format. The article Hiroshima was published in its entirety in August 31, 1946; it stood alone in the issue, unaccompanied by the other articles and cartoons that usually filled the magazine's pages. Until the publication of Hiroshima, the New Yorker was better known for light satire and upscale humor than gritty war coverage. The article proved so popular that all newsstand copies of the magazine sold out on the day the issue was released. As journalist Ben Yagoda writes in his book About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, when Albert Einstein attempted to buy one thousand copies of the magazine, he was told none were available. The

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