"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.