A Literary Analysis Of Hiroshima, By John Hersey

Hiroshima Analysis

Coping with the memories of the past can be difficult, especially from horrific and tragic events. After the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, John Hersey captured the genuine struggles of Japanese survivors in the book Hiroshima. These six survivors still remember exactly what they said and did in the day’s events and those moments will never leave their mind. The tribulation of the nuclear attack has scared the Japanese people for decades. The ironic horror portrayed in John Hersey’s Hiroshima exposes individual survivor’s perspectives of the deadly atomic bomb. The famous story of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima shocked the whole world. This was the first time a nuclear bomb has been used in warfare. So, when John Hersey released his book Hiroshima, a memoir of

Usually horrific events come with horrific stories, but as the bomb dropped, many of the survivor’s thoughts were the opposite. The instant the bomb dropped, a flash appeared, described by favorable words, including “brilliant”, “yellow”, and “bright” (Hersey 10). All of these words have a positive connotation, which makes the reader recognize how different and unexpected the atomic bomb was. Another ironic situation captured in this book included the perfect correlation of the time and traffic. Even on the one of the unluckiest days for the Japanese people, survivor Dr. Sasaki realized that “...If he had taken his customary train the morning, and if he had to wait a few minutes for the streetcar, as often happened, he would have been close to the center at the time of the explosion and would surely have perished.” (Hersey 14). Even after experiencing a life changing event, Dr. Sasaki, along with many other survivors, immediately began helping the injured (Hersey 15), which says a lot about the Japanese people, their culture, and their