Hiroshima -- Detail

John Hersey jumps right into the story, going into the lives of six survivors of the Hiroshima bombing. A lot of past readings take a bit too long to get into the main action of the story -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing -- by including too much background into the situation at hand, but Hersey goes directly into their lives. I think it's just a matter of preference as to what readers like.

Specifically about Hersey's use of detail, one of my favorite sentences was on page three about Mr. Tanimoto:

"He wore his black hair parted in the middle and rather long; the prominence of the frontal bones just above his eyebrows and the smallness of his mustache, mouth, and chin gave him a strange, old-young look, boyish and yet wise, weak and yet fiery."

I enjoyed how the detail narrows as the sentence finishes. It's not particularly specific, but allows the reader to have a vivid picture of his own interpretation. I have my own idea of what an "old-young look, boyish and yet wise, weak and yet fiery" may look, but others probably have a wildly different outlook on Tanimoto.

I couldn't find much of a pattern in his detail. For some, they were very concise and short, while others like the aforementioned quote trails on and on. The one consistent piece was that he tells it like it is, never really digging too deep into the historical or scientific background.

"Both he and Mr. Matsuo reacted in terror -- and both had time to react (for they were 3,500 yards, or two miles, from the center of the explosion). Mr. Matsuo dashed up the front steps into the house and dived among the bedrolls and buried himself there. Mr. Tarimoto took four or five steps and threw himself between two big rocks in the garden ... He felt a sudden pressure, and then splinters and pieces of board and fragments of tile fell on him. He heard no roar."

My reading went by not as quickly as I'd like. The use of detail was sporadic throughout, not in any bad way, I just couldn't grasp the complete thought process Hersey had while writing about these six survivors. It was a highly informative piece that wrote about the Hiroshima bombing in a much different angle and perspective.