Nuclear Fear

It seems anymore that fear is in fashion. Politically or even otherwise, you got to be scared. Be afraid that you will be blown up or be afraid that your rights will be taken away. It seems that Washington cannot find a happy medium for those two fears. Where did all this uneasiness start? 9-11? Vietnam War? Kennedy’s assassination? No, perhaps it goes back to that fateful day, August 6, 1945, the day that should really live in epiphany. It is the day we as human beings reached a turning point with no u-turn in site. We dropped the very first nuclear bomb and killed 100,000 instantly in Hiroshima, Japan, and the death toll rose well beyond that in after effects. We as Americans vaporized another people, leaving only a shadow of them in ash on walls, each in the position that they were in when the blast hit. We unleashed a monster that haunts us to this day. We fear terrorist will harness this power and turn it on us.

If this is all so scary, and in fact, something we would all rather act as if it isn’t real, why do our politicians talk about it everyday? William Powers of the National Journal, claims that our fascination with these fears that began after the first bomb was dropped “was a kind of glue (Powers).” Do the stories from this beginning of nuclear fear add adhesion to this ‘glue’? Aristotle described in the Poetics how tragic drama provides a “catharsis of undesirable emotions of pity and fear (Miller).” The drama cures worry like a vaccination prevents mumps. It provides “a controlled dose of it and then clears it away (Miller).” Could not two of our stories we have read provide the same effect?

The two nuclear pieces we read were “Thunder and Roses” by Theodore Sturgeon and “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury. Each piece is distinctive, though only a few years apart in publication (1947 and 1950 respectively). “Thunder and Roses” is set in a time when the United States has been near annihilated because of nuclear war. The men who survive had so little to do; “it felt good to have a purpose again-even shaving before eight o’clock” becomes meaningful (Sturgeon). Perhaps it is the language of this piece that strikes home. It is like watching “The Best Years of Our Lives” and yet, even more real and disturbing than that film. Perhaps it is the character Star Anthim’s description of the roses, “alive and sick, and the thorns turned back on themselves” that hits us hard, like Homer’s nightly routine of taking off his metal claws. We also know when we read this story that the knowledge of some of the effects of radiation poisoning has been discovered. Star faints and begins to bleed from her side. This shows signs of an expose of 3–4 sieverts which causes bleeding in the kidneys, mouth and under the skin. That type of exposure has a 50% chance of death after 30 days. Star does die, but the protagonist, Pete, is spurred on by her death to not allow any more violence to ensue. He prevents the last switch available from being hit. This story was published at a time when only the U.S. had weapons and “would actually threatened by deliverable bombs or missiles from another decade.” “Thunder and Roses” questions on whether any nuclear weapon is good, and looks to what the arms race might produce. Reading this, we might as a people might band together to get rid of nuclear weapons, but we have not. We won’t and in this political environment, we want to be the ones with the nuclear power.

“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury is one of my favorites by him. It is a strange story, one that is absent of humans and yet it is centered on them. The story is about a mechanized house of dreams. It does everything for you; cook, clean, and even reads you poetry at night. Something has gone awry though. The breakfast isn’t eaten. The house stands alone, in a “ruined city that gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.” Silhouettes of people are described on the walls of the house, catching the whole family in midst action. Like those in Hiroshima, these humans become black images on the wall. Ghosts that the house works for that will never be alive again. The futility of the house, in its letting in the dog, being “angry at having to pick up mud,” it is heartbreaking. It calls for a human, but none are there. The house reads a poem of great relevance and irony, saying “not one would mind…/if mankind perished utterly (Bradbury).” Yet, it all the house’s work, it too has fallen victim to an accident. A “fire was cleaver” and the house cannot put it out and utterly burns and dies, like its masters, in ash (Bradbury). Bradbury makes the date of death of the house August 5, 2026. So near the same date as the Hiroshima bombing that one might as well assume he meant it that way.

In one story, humans prevail but barely. In the other, we are destroyed and even our technology does not survive much longer. So, what medicine do these stories provide? Are we cured yet of our fears? Indeed no. The fear of atomic annihilation is “free-floating and abstract" in that only “residents of two Japanese cities have ever lived through that sort of attack or could concretely imagine what it was like (Powers).” So we still fear, and these stories only provide a question, not a cure. They provide an insight, but we must look beyond it. We must imagine it as a real possibility without losing grip. Only time will tell if we can do that.

Works cited

Bradbury, Ray. "There Will Come Soft Rains." Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Ed. Patricia S. Warrick, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greensberg. New York: Longman, 1988. 230-4

Miller, J. Hillis. "Narrative." Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Lenticchia, and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. 67.

Powers, William. " FEAR AND LOATHING" National Journal. 30 Oct 2004:3303. Proquest. 04 July. 2005. GALILEO .

Sturgeon, Theodore. “Thunder and Roses.” Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Ed. Patricia S. Warrick, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greensberg. New York: Longman, 1988. 230-4