Personal Reaction to Hiroshima
First, I would like to start my paper off by saying that I read books for two reasons: it is required reading for English or it has something to do with poker, psychology, or cars. However, there is always a book that I stumble across that makes me enjoy reading books that don't fit in my two criterias. Last year it was The Great Gatsby and this year it happened to be the book I read over the summer for history, Hiroshima. This book interested me because it struck me at many different levels; it had emotional appeal, it was written in a way that kept me turning the pages, and it taught me many lessons about life and its preciousness.
The first thing I noticed after reading a couple pages of this book was that it had descriptions that were strangely simple but portrayed deep emotions.
This image was selected as a picture of the week o...
A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, Japan
Hiroshima in ruins, October 1945, two months after...That is one thing I'm constantly on the prowl for whenever I read, good descriptions that really paint a picture in the reader's mind.
"She was grateful until he brought two horrible wounded people-a woman with a whole breast shredded off and a man whose face was all raw from a burn- to share the shed with her"(33).
This sentence on a completely grammatical level looks very simple with very simple sentence structure and vocabulary. However when one reads the sentence out loud, these simple words clearly draw out the gruesome scene in one's mind, and before he or she knows it, the image is in full color, living and breathing. This use of description kept me hooked throughout most of the book.
Another great tool that John Hersey used to keep the book page turning was the alternating character voices. One part would be on Ms. Sasaki...