Aftermath’. The narrator describes the lives and death of the six main characters after Hersey came back to Hiroshima almost four decades later.
4.2.1.2 Theme The theme of Hersey’s Hiroshima is atomic bomb victims’ survival.
Written one year after the first atomic bombs were ever dropped on civilians, Hersey focused
on how the six main characters survived the explosion and what lives they got through even after forty years later when he came back to write the final chapter.
4.2.1.3 Dialogue
Unlike other usual product of journalistic, literary journalism such as Hersey’s Hiroshima, uses dialogue in its story. In writing the journalistic article of
Hiroshima, Hersey uses dialogue to describe the situation and feeling that occurred at that time.
Here is the dialogue between one out of six main characters, Mr. Tanimoto, with one of the Army doctors at East Parade Ground. It describes the dilemma and
rage that is felt by Mr. Tanimoto. […] Nevertheless, he went up to one of the Army doctors and said,
as reproachfully as he could, “Why have you not come to Asano Park? You are badly needed there.”
Without even looking up from his work, the doctor said in a tired voice, “This is my station.”
“But there are many dying on the riverbank over there.” “The first duty,” the doctor said, “is to take care of the
slightest wounded.” “Why—when there are many who are heavily wounded on
the riverbank?” The doctor moved to another patient. “In an emergency like
this,” he said, as if he were reciting from a manual, “the first task is to help as many as possible—to save as many lives as possible.
There is no hope for the heavily wounded. They will die. We can’t bother with them.”
“That may be right from a medical standpoint—” Mr. Tanimoto began, but then he looked out across the field, where the
many dead lay close and intimate with those who were still living,
Universitas Sumatera Utara
and he turned away without finishing his sentence, angry now with himself.
Hersey, 1989: 50 Another example of meaningful dialogue in Hersey’s Hiroshima is between
one out of six main characters, Father Kleinsorge, and Mr. Fukai, who apparently had been hopeless and just wanted to die.
[…] “Leave me here.” Father Kleinsorge went into the room and took Mr. Fukai by
the collar of his coat and said, “Come with me or you’ll die.” Mr. Fukai said, “Leave me here to die.”
Father Kleinsorge began to shove and haul Mr. Fukai out of the room. Then the theological student came up and grabbed Mr.
Fukai’s feet, and Father Kleinsorge took his shoulders, and together they carried him downstairs and outdoors.
“I can’t walk” Mr. Fukai cried. “Leave me here” Father Kleinsorge got his paper suitcase with the money in it
and took Mr. Fukai up pickaback, and the party started for the East Parade Ground, their district’s ‘safe area’. As they went out of the
gate, Mr. Fukai, quite childlike now, beat on Father Kleinsorge’s shoulders and said, “I won’t leave. I won’t leave.” […]
Hersey, 1989: 27
4.2.1.4 Image
