Black Rain The main character in the novel is in some ways like myself. Mr. Shizuma is a person that is intrigued by many things and likes to see what reaction people have from any action. Throughout the novel he feels the need to go to different parts of the city and surrounding communities in order to see the effects of the unknown bomb. Mr. Shizuma was not only interested in what happened to the people of the community but he was also interested in finding out what the weapon used was called and made out of. There were different names given to the bomb throughout the book and he sums up the names in one paragraph, The name of the bomb had already undergone a number of changes, from the initial new weapon through new-type bomb, secret weapon, special new-type bomb, to special high-capacity bomb. That day, I learned for the first time to call it an atomic bomb. (Black Rain 282) The importance of the name of the bomb may seem ineffectual, but he seems to dwell on finding out what caused this type of destruction. Something else that Mr. Shizuma wants to do is remember every little detail about what happens to everything from what angle the house was on after the bomb to what his wife cooked for dinner with the food rationing. He even likes to write how people cured themselves of radiation sickness and what the burns and other injuries look and act like. These things are like myself in the fact that he does not like to forget what things are like, wants to see first hand what the effects are, and is very interested in finding information about new things that he has never seen before. He also likes to help people greatly such as his constant wanderings looking for coal for his community. If you were depended on would you help your community? I think so. The theme that is very meaningful to me is that war hurts two different parts of a country. The first is the military, which was not really talked about, and then there is the civilians. The civilians must ration food so that the military can eat, and then they must also suffer because the bomb that was dropped was not meant for any military base but to destroy and kill a city. The theme is clear in meaning that it hurts the civilians much more than it hurts the military and that war is very, very cruel. The people that were rationing had very little to eat and that amount became smaller as the war continued. People were forced to grow carp in small, and search for mussels in ponds in order to get any type of meat. By the end of the war there were no mussels left in any of the many streams and there were also no fish in any of the ponds. The only thing that survived were the eels who were seen swimming up the river a day before the surrender was given. This was a sign of rebirth. It only took a year after the Hiroshima bombing for the surrender and during that time the government did not help any of the people that really were hurt by the war, the civilians. It was strange that the people felt any remorse at all for losing the war when the government that they were supposed to believe in left them homeless and without any food. Innocent, unarmed people killed and mangled by a weapon that could kill the entire planet. For what purpose was the bomb dropped? Mr. Shizuma made many remarks about how if the opposition would have only waited a while longer they would not have had to drop the bomb because the country was internally falling apart. This seems to me that the dropping of the bomb was nothing but a science experiment to the opposition. That is the hidden theme to this novel. The only type of person that could possibly read this book is a person that is very open minded to other ideas. To most people from the United States the bomb was necessary in order to stop the war. In the eyes of the Japanese the bomb was not needed to stop the war. Which side is true? The answer is both sides. To have an open mind and to be able to accept new ideas is crucial when you look at people from a different type of background and way of thinking. To read this novel you must also have a pretty solid stomach because there are many detailed entries about wounds and the way that the skin starts to melt right off the living body. The whole story is told from the eyes and thoughts of the main character Mr. Shizuma is different than any first hand account that I have ever read and a reader must be willing to get into that character in order to get the message, feelings, and pictures that Mr. Shizuma is trying to put forth. The novel is written extremely clear but one of the problems is that it gets slow every once in a while if Mr. Shizuma gets something into his mind so he decides to get it done. The pond that his friend is growing carp in is traveled to what seems to be about a thousand times. What is good about the many travels to these same places is that each time the scene changes slightly with someone becoming sick or the carp growing. What a person needs to read this book is careful thought because of the slight changes and also a map seems to grow inside your head of the different places that he goes to. These places are described in so much detail that it does not take very much imagination to see what is going on and what he is seeing. The title has a lot to do with the book because the title is how the whole thing started, with Mr. Shizumas daughter coming home with black spots on her skin where the black rain had hit her. It could not be washed off and it burnt through clothing. The ending to the novel was satisfactory because the end of the war was a good place to end the novel. The only problem that I can see with this type of ending is that the reader wants to know what has happened to the community after a few years but what the writer is trying to say is very clear and enforced with people crying because they lost the war. The crying was not only because the war was lost but also for the people that died, or are dyeing, in the community. Also the crying was also from fear of what was going to happen to them now that another country had control of them. The men mostly feared that they were going to be castrated but they knew that the country would never be the same but they would be able to eat. The eels that were viewed in the river were still in the larvae stage and they were swimming upriver. This gives the man in the story hope that things will be all right and that they have the power to build a new community and help his family deal with the sickness that his daughter has. The overall meaning of the novel is that war makes things hard for the people that have to stay at home and support their soldiers. The heart of any country is with the general population and when that general population was hit with something unknown it did not only shock the rest of the country but it made the country wonder if they were strong enough. People will pull through for themselves and family before they think about what is going to happen to the way that they live. This novel shows the power and curiosity of the human spirit. It does accomplish what it set out to do, show the effect on the losing side of war.
In John Hersey's book, Hiroshima, he provides a detailed account of six people and how the bombing of Hiroshima affected their lives. John Heresy felt it was important to focus his story on six individuals to create a remembrance that war affects more than just nations and countries, but actual human beings. Moreover, the book details the effect the bomb had on the city of Hiroshima. “Houses all around were burning, and the wind was now blowing hard.” (Hersey, 27).
The non-fiction book Hiroshima by John Hersey is an engaging text with a powerful message in it. The book is a biographical text about lives of six people Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki and Rev. Tanimoto in Hiroshima, Japan and how their lives completely changed at 8:15 on the 6th of August 1945 by the dropping of the first atomic bomb. The author, John Hersey, through his use of descriptive language the in book Hiroshima exposes the many horrors of a nuclear attack.
The bubonic plague in the 14th century was known to be one of the most horrendous events that took place in Europe. A common name for this time period was the ‘Black Death’, however this term was not coined until the 17th century. The Black Death claimed an estimated 75 to 200 million people’s lives in all of Europe.
In the beginning, the Italian town of Genoa was one of the busiest ports in Europe. Ships sailed from there to trade all over the Mediterranean Sea. In October of 1347, 12 merchant ships sailed from Caffa to Italy. A strange disease had infected the crew of these ships. Dying bodies lay aboard the ships. City officials, afraid that the disease might spread, issued an order that no person or piece of merchandise was to leave the ships. They even forbade medical treatment for the sick sailors and passengers. The disease still spread. The officials had not considered that the rats from the ships were able to leave the ships by crawling along the ropes that were tied to the ships. From Italy, the disease spread all over Europe, traveling along the major trade routes. The rats were responsible for carrying the disease, which was transmitted by fleas from infected rats. The fleas drank the rats' blood that carried the bacteria. The bacteria multiplied in the flea's gut. While the fleas gut was clogged with bacteria, the flea bit the human and regurgitated blood into the wound.
The social classes that survived the plague, rich and poor, had to come together and find
Have you ever heard of "The Great Mortality," or maybe "The Pestilence?" (Facts) Probably not, but you most likely you heard of the Black Plague or Black Death. This infection terrorized Europe from 1348 through 1351, killing between 75 to 200 million people. Most of the people who contracted the infection died 3 days after catching it. Only a few people lived 4 days after exposure (“The Black Death of 1348 to 1350). Those who did pass away had no documentation of their death, so the exact death count is unknown to historians. The infection originated from Asia in north-western China and came to Europe on cargo traveling on the Silk Road. It is now known that the infection came from the bacterium Yersinisa pestis, which lives in flea guts (Szczepanski). When the flea bites, the bacterium transfers the infection to the victim, being humans or most likely rodents. Common first signs are swollen lymph nodes and black cyst on the armpit or groin area ( Szczepanski). Victims acquired symptoms similar to the flu, their blood dropping in pressure, heart rate increases, and a fever emerges out of nowhere (DesOrmeaux). The Black Plague, an infection that killed millions, defaced a religion, and managed to eliminate a 1/3 to 1/2 of Europe's population.
Sweeping through Western Europe during the fourteenth century, the Bubonic Plague wiped out nearly one third of the population and did not regard: status, age or even gender. All of this occurred as a result of a single fleabite. Bubonic Plague also known as Black Death started in Asia and traveled to Europe by ships. The Plague was thought to be spread by the dominating empire during this time, the Mongolian Empire, along the Silk Road. The Bubonic Plague was an infectious disease spread by fleas living on rats, which can be easily, be attached to traveler to be later spread to a city or region. Many factors like depopulation, decreasing trade, and huge shifts in migrations occurred during the Bubonic Plague. During Bubonic Plague there were also many different beliefs and concerns, which include fear, exploitation, religious and supernatural superstition, and a change of response from the fifteenth to eighteen century.
The sources of this outbreak were either bubonic or viral in nature. Basically, commercial trading ships carrying infected people, rats and flea-infested cargo were the primary mode of transmitting the bubonic strand while the viral stand was pneumonic and spread by person-to-person contact. Russia’s rural areas were affected by the plague in the latter 19th century; however, there were only about 420 deaths due to better hygiene and patient isolation. The Siberian area saw a much greater death toll because of increased prices and demand for marmot skins. Marmots were small rats known to carrier this disease. Hunters of these rats were responsible for spreading this disease which killed approximately 60,000 people. Bubonic plague was found in other places but mostly contained in Asia. The disease was also found in Hawaii and San Franciso around the 20th century. Modern human outbreaks are linked to high mortality rates amongst rats without the presence of buboes and swelling of the groin. The third outbreak was instrumental in leading to modern day
The Plague, also known as the Black Death, or the Bubonic Plague, which struck in 1346, and again in 1361-62, ravaged all of Europe to the extent of bringing gruesome death to millions people of the Middle Ages. It was a combination of bubonic, septicemia, and pneumonic plague strains that started in the east and worked it’s way west, but never left its native home. One of the things that made the plague one of the worst was that there were outbreaks almost every ten years but still restricted to Europe. It is thought that one third to one half of the population in Europe could have possibly died due to the plague with some towns of a death rate of up to 30 or 40 percent. Very few that were infected with the plague actually survived more than one month after receiving the disease.
This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
The official reason given for dropping the bomb was to bring a quick end to tht war and save American lives. However, Takaki presents many different explanations as to why the decision to use the bomb was made. He disagrees with the popular belief that the decision to use the bomb was made solely to quickly end the war in the Pacific and to save American lives. Takaki presents theories such as international concerns, American sentiment, and racism in an attempt to more fully explain why this decision was made.
One of, if not the most influential part, of allowing the bombs to drop is because of the mentality of the Japanese military and the pull they had in politics. As Maddox stated, “[t]he army, not the Foreign Office controlled the situation” (Maddox, pg. 286). Although Japan had an influential leader in regards to their emperor, the military wanted to and would have engag...
As you may figure viral deadly diseases such as malaria, HIV, and Lung Cancer have killed millions within the years of Human existence, but the one in particular to cause a major impact in the world’s history of sicknesses is The Black Death, formally known as the Bubonic Plague. The Bubonic Plague wasn’t the longest epidemic. The timeline that the disease was present, single handedly slaughtered 25 million people of the vulnerable population in Europe. The childhood nursery rhyme song “Ring around the rosies, pocket full of posies”, discreetly demonstrates the red rash symptomatic of infection and holding flowers under one's nose to combat the smell of sickness and dead bodies.(Ainsworth 64) The symptoms of the disease were airborne and highly contagious and could spread viciously to whomever that came in touching distance of an infected individual. The Black Death put SARS and AIDS in a lower caparison inquiring that they all have caused a death domino effect.(Ainsworth 64) The year of 1333 is when the plague originally geared up into severe sweeps starting in China with the international trading route occurring between constantinople and the mediterranean near the black sea. The living conditions people lived under helped the spread of the disease greatly.
The Bubonic Plague, otherwise known as the Black Death was a raging disease. Most people thought of it as the physical Grim Reaper of their town or community. The disease lasted about six years, 1347 to 1352. The Bubonic Plague was a travesty that has traveled throughout Europe and has raged and decimated both large and small towns, putting Europe through a lot.
Surviving the drop of an atomic bomb and trying to live a normal life after such a tragic event, is the most difficult goal anyone can achieve. Hiroshima, by John Hershey takes us into the memories of six survivors that made it through the attack and how they managed to get their life back together. Forty years after the bombing many survivors were still haunted by the horrifying event, but as time went on they were willing to share their experiences and let the world know that they made were alive and survived.