Hi, Charlie here.

“Hiroshima” is narrated from the view of a child. You can sense this from start: the words are mostly one syllable: "Keep a straight back" and "The floor is still cold from night and stings my knees" (163). The narrator uses a lot of repetition, like using the word “spirit” repeatedly in the first paragraph (163) and “soybean” (165). This gives the impression of a limited vocabulary. The extended vocabulary and knowledge comes up when the child narrator recounts knowledge about war that she has learned from her father or school: “Honorable death before surrender” (163), or “That is a B-24. That is a B-27. And that is a B-29” (172). This makes it clear how directly the war is affecting the narrator’s childhood: her childlike voice is disrupted by the information about the war that surrounds her.

            Repetition is used in other ways as well. The idea of safety comes up multiple times, referring to the narrator and her family in the country and the city (168, 169, 175). Not only does this show how important safety has become in the narrator’s world, but it creates as strong irony at the end when her family in the city are killed. Another important repeated phrase is “Don’t blink” (171, 174, 177), which first comes up in reference to the photo the narrator’s family took together and later to the flash of the atomic bomb that kills the narrator’s family. Repeating the phrase draws a chilling connection between the happy events in the narrator’s life and the harsh reality of the war that is going on around her.

Week #3 Blog Post

Hi, Karen Chau here.

In "Hiroshima," Nam Le tells the story through a first person narrative. The narrator not only vocalizes the action, which advances the plot, but also his/her thoughts, which informs the reader about the narrator's opinion of what is happening in the story. Dialogue in the story is told without quotations, and this blends all the conversation with the action in the story as part of the narrator's collective experience. The story has a range of short and long sentences, but the language used is simple,  especially in the shorter sentences. For example, the narrator says, "I look away from her. I look down and see my face in the shiny wood. It looks half-asleep" (1). This fits in with the narrator's age and develops her character as a young child who makes lots of observations about her surroundings. The narrator also often repeats what other characters say and what the radio says, which agrees with the idea that the narrator is young and constantly absorbing others' actions and words to learn about the environment.

Heather Chau on "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water"

I found the way the author wrote this story very interesting. Despite this story being about 18 pages long, the most significant passage for me was the last paragraph on the last page. There weren't many metaphors throughout the story and as I was reading it the story didn't feel like it had much of a purpose other than to tell a story about two families in the South in the 1930s.
But then, towards the end, the reader is struck by the revelation that Ras had already been mutilated. Because it's revealed so suddenly, it hits the reader very hard. Thee scenic paragraph afterward gives us a little time to digest, but that feeling after the reveal stays with us as we head to the last paragraph, which tells us nonchalantly that this story was 60 years in the past. In the present, the story says, such bad things no longer happen, but xoninues with, if you believe that you'll believe anything. In the end, the story, even though it takes place 60 years in the past, is a commentary about the present. We currently live in a world where bad things don't really happen to people who read stories, the ones who have the time and education to, and so setting the story in the past and in a place pretty culturally removed from where we live is fitting-- because the bad things are so far removed from us that it can feel like another time period entirely (but at the same time it is geographically close and so we can identify with it, at least a little). However, with the last paragraph the author grounds the story to us, brings the awful feeling you had after reading what happened to Ras with you to your world, and it makes you feel and think and wonder where, what, and how do things like happen so close to our world.

Response to "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water"

Hi, this is Carson Patterson.
I found the lack of female characters in this story, and the minimal description of those who do appear, interesting, particularly given that the story was written by a woman. After stating that the Tinsleys' daughter was "neglected, as daughters are", the narrator proceeds to neglect her as well and she is never mentioned again, despite the great care given to characterizing her brother. Also, in describing Naomi's reaction to her new home, the narrator says, "What the wife thought when seh saw the sod hut...can be guessed at but not known", an odd statement, given that the narrator seems to be able to see into every other character's mind easily. The only woman with a substantial role in the story is Mrs. Tinsley, the unbalanced mother who killed her own baby, and even she takes very little action compared to her husband.
This treatment of female characters could be related to the author's seeming desire to describe the world matter-of-factly as it is; early 20th century Wyoming ranch society seemingly had little place for women, so the narrator mostly ignores them as well, preferring to focus on the men who led more interesting lives. Perhaps the mindset which the story conveys of the insignificance of humanity compared to the land is also a more masculine one; even on country ranches, women spent more time inside the home and were less likely to go roaming over the wild country, and therefore perhaps looked differently at the world. (Along these lines, aside from the scene where she throws her baby in the river and a brief time at the train station, Mrs. Tinsley always appears inside the house, in contrast to the male characters, who are usually outside.) These are just a few possible ideas I have had; however, I really don't have a conclusive reason behind the author's choice to focus the story almost exclusively on men.

Week 3: Alejandra Garcia

“Hiroshima” by Nam Le is told from the perspective of a third grade girl in Japan during WWII. The 1st person account bounces from one thought to another, from the present to past memories. The narrator is in a temple outside the city with other school children. She is often reminded of her parents and sister. This leads to memories in the past, told intertwined within the present. There are no indication of transitions nor use of quotation marks, the reader most closely pay attention, and follow the narrator's stream of consciousness.
Following Mayako’s memories we are able to pick up on the feelings of some of the adults. Mayako, like many of the children with her, are echoing what they hear on the radio or from others. Some of the adults however, in their actions display something different than what is said. Mayako many times remembers the way her father looked at her and her sister. Although Mayako is not able to describe how he felt, her visual description are strong. This focus on the sensory adds to the child perspective.

Josephine Surer

Hiroshima is about the chaotic life of a young Japanese girl living through the daily bomb threats in Japan during World War II. The concept of loyalty towards her country and family is very significant because it shows the strong anti-Americanism of that period. It also shows the strong sense of community of one country during such dangerous times and how the people all face these types of tests together. The story also points out the strong Japanese pride and honor by having the main character constantly comparing her ways to the ones of a powerful samurai. “But for a samurai when his belly is empty it is a disgrace to feel hungry.” (165) Although the characters try to act tough during this time, the disparity of the situation is pointed out through the repetition of important words such as “strong”, “fearless”, “glorious”, and “alive”. The author’s style is to repeat many of the words and quotes from the characters to minimize the content and show just how limited the people were during that time.

"Hiroshima" - Wu

Hi, Allison Wu here. “Hiroshima” reads as a spiritual experience. The tone has a childlike, irresponsible nature to it which causes an ebb and flow that can hardly be contained within the structure of the prose. This effect can be imagined through wind, as wind is effortless yet powerful, shifting through time without boundaries. This is how I view “Hiroshima”. Not only is wind literally referred to in the prose, but it is also conveyed through the stylistic choices in sentence formation. The story is filled with factual statements, unanswered questions, and sentences which cause confusion about time and space. We understand this story with slight difficulty because of the moments and memories that we live through which compromise differing type of sentences. We experience the point of view with the knowledge that war is at its peak but somehow, the prose allows us to experience each scene as a full life – full lives that accumulate into the feeling that war is only second to all of the internal experiences of the speaker. Throughout “Hiroshima”, it is internal circumstance that we focus on with spiritual gracefulness yet intensity. And on the brink of one of the largest human holocausts in our history, this story seems to pass through it like a playful spirit who has found a way to not only live past death, but live through death as purposefully as life. 

Alex Lemme "People in Hell Just want a Drink of Water"

What I found most interesting about Annie Proulx's story "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water" was the balance between the personification of the wind in conflict with the dehumanisation of Ras. In the introduction of the story and throughout, the wind is described as "hissing" and "shrieking". Apart from the descriptions being rather onomatopoeic, the action of "shrieking" alludes to the wind being an either horrified or enraged person. This case of personification made me see the wind as a central character in the narration and in my mind the image of the wind formed as a cruel mistress in the dry landscape.
Furthermore, this personification of an inanimate natural phenomenon starkly clashes with the dehumanisation of Ras, one of the main characters in the story. Ras was left severely disfigured and mentally damaged by a terrible accident and many characters in the narration refer to him as "it" and "that".
This chilling contrast really connects the reader to the environment of the story as well as the characters and how they are both perceived within the narration.

People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water

Hi! This is Cathy Lee.

One thing that was apparent in the story was the continual reduction of characters to stereotypical gender roles. Male characters are imbued with stereotypically masculine traits such as violence and physical capability. Given that agricultural work and the handling of livestock require heavy physical labour, able-bodied male children are viewed as “money in the bank” (p. 653), or as investments and units of labour rather than human beings with limitations. Furthermore, acts of violence such as “[kicking] the frost out of a horse” (p. 653) and Ras’ unwanted sexual advances are normalised and seen as “masculine urges”, rather than abnormalities. On the other hand, girls are seen as physically inferior, and therefore “neglected” (p. 657), and not as prized as boys are, as they have less worth in a traditionally male-dominated industry that values hard labour. The notion that female characters are seen as weaker compared to male characters is also supported in the implication that husbands, while talking to their wives about sensitive issues, usually "[spare their] feminine sensibilities" (p. 667) They are also likened to commodities – Jaxon finds “plenty of what he [needs] on his travels”, referring to women available for sex. 

What was jarring to me was the nonchalant nature of the violence in the story. Mrs Tinsley (although seen to be remorseful after the incident), throws her "crying infant into the water", simply because the infant was wailing, a common characteristic of babies at that age. Additionally, when Ras' genitalia is severed, his reaction when the subject is brought up is to laugh (p. 666), instead of seek medical help for the infection he now has, or react negatively. Finally, the story ends on a chilling note: the suggestion that the horrific events that have occurred in this story are still present in today's society.

Vedica Bhasin- People in Hell just want a drink Of Water

Vedica Bhasin- People in Hell just want a Drink Of Water

To me, this story sheds light on the daily life and sufferings of the down trodden, specifically ranchers or famers, and the stories that shadow their struggle with large scale issues such as the economy as well as their own microscopic issues such as a dysfunctional family; a characteristic that perhaps plagues almost all characters, some which are discussed in greater detail than the other.

The two central themes however went hand in hand- the poor economic state, especially in the Isaac family dictated their family value systems or organization- “ Boys were money in the bank”,  “bought them up to fill his labor need”. These sentences not only expose the urgency or desperation of money but also hint at a stoic attitude towards family. Simultaneously, the writer also makes a subtle comment on the importance of women in such a scenario, while Isaac’s son’s are allotted almost a paragraph each in their description, there is one brief line about Tinsley’s daughter- “The daughter, neglected as daughters are, married a cow boy with bad habits and moved with him to Baggs.”

The reason for this, in my opinion is that perhaps the settings- the farm, where the boys are predominantly the expected labor, doesn’t leave much space for women unless they are cooking “Mother’s made fried chicken” or being harassed for the one thing that men truly need them for.

The writers sharp one liners at the start of the story play a foreshadowing effect of the lives of the characters that are to be revealed- “tragedies of people count for nothing although the signs of misadventure are everywhere”. The writer choice of diction too, largely contributes to offering an insight into the real struggles of the characters, “The wind shrieking along the tracks” .  The imagery that she manages to sustain through the story “listening to the water trickle past their ears.” Keeps the reader engaged in an adequately chaotic story.

The last line in the story, personally for me is of great significance, almost as if the writer is attempting to send a message. Native to a third world nation, I completely realise that barbaric handling of one another and the real struggle for food and income are not just stories of the past. Since Annie Proulx is a journalist, I like to believe she was probably writing from fragments of similar experience.