Something I have been thinking about a lot while reading this book is the different reactions people have to emergency. The six people that the book focuses on survived to tell their story, so obviously they did not have any drastically destructive reactions. The most fascinating and gruesome example is when Mr. Fukai, the secretary of the diocese, tells his friends to "leave him [at their church in Hiroshima] to die"(27). I thought to myself that sometimes who we are is so involved and immersed in where we live and what we do that if it disappears, so does our will to live. Some people can not handle the trauma and become dissociated. Some people sacrifice their energy to save others, some run away and serve their own interests, and some stay to make their new lives normal. I think hardly anyone knows what they will actually do in this sort of situation. For the most part, we would like to think that we are the kind who would be brave and help others, but fear is all consuming and can make you do things you did not think yourself capable of.
I agree with the person above for I as well have been thinking about the reactions different people had to emergency. For example Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, A young surgeon at the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima, was always calm and even though he saw people dying in front of his eyes his spirit was still up and he never gave up or felt devastated. Whereas Toshiko Sasaki, A young clerk who works in a tin works factory, was petrified by the events and his spirit was broken after that. The most interesting thing was that at the beginning of the story when everything was peaceful everybody were acting the same and also knew that if an emergency happened they would be able to handle it. Well after it happened what they thought they would do was not true at all. It is interesting how we think we are someone we are not sometimes. I guess the saying works here that "Knowing that path and going through it is not that same thing".
I agree with the first post and Avetis’ post that people’s reactions in an emergency can be unpredictable and sometimes different than one would expect. One reaction that I was really struck by was that of Dr. Fujii when he found out that he was one of only a handful of doctors that survived the blast. Instead of becoming totally overwhelmed by the 10,000 patients that lined up outside his hospital, he stayed calm and helped as many people as he could. I was also struck in the book by some of the hard moral dilemmas that people had to face. One that comes to mind is when Mr. Tanimoto gets angry at the doctors for not doing more to help the people in need. He had an incredibly hard time comprehending the reality that it was not possible to help the severely injured, and eventually “turned away, angry with himself” because he failed to see the disaster in a larger scope (51). Although it was certainly horrific to just leave people to die, the doctors had to make this difficult decision so they could focus on the people that had more of a chance to live.
I was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri and first moved to Massachusetts to attend Amherst College, where I majored in both English and Russian literature. After graduation, I accepted a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Tartu in Estonia, where I studied children's literature and semiotics ("the study of signs and symbols"). I returned to the United States to spend a few years exploring the wide world of business, but the classroom kept calling. It was high time to earn my Masters in Education from Tufts University and join the staff at Arlington High School.
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Something I have been thinking about a lot while reading this book is the different reactions people have to emergency. The six people that the book focuses on survived to tell their story, so obviously they did not have any drastically destructive reactions. The most fascinating and gruesome example is when Mr. Fukai, the secretary of the diocese, tells his friends to "leave him [at their church in Hiroshima] to die"(27). I thought to myself that sometimes who we are is so involved and immersed in where we live and what we do that if it disappears, so does our will to live. Some people can not handle the trauma and become dissociated. Some people sacrifice their energy to save others, some run away and serve their own interests, and some stay to make their new lives normal. I think hardly anyone knows what they will actually do in this sort of situation. For the most part, we would like to think that we are the kind who would be brave and help others, but fear is all consuming and can make you do things you did not think yourself capable of.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the person above for I as well have been thinking about the reactions different people had to emergency. For example Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, A young surgeon at the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima, was always calm and even though he saw people dying in front of his eyes his spirit was still up and he never gave up or felt devastated. Whereas Toshiko Sasaki, A young clerk who works in a tin works factory, was petrified by the events and his spirit was broken after that. The most interesting thing was that at the beginning of the story when everything was peaceful everybody were acting the same and also knew that if an emergency happened they would be able to handle it. Well after it happened what they thought they would do was not true at all. It is interesting how we think we are someone we are not sometimes. I guess the saying works here that "Knowing that path and going through it is not that same thing".
ReplyDelete- Avetis
I agree with the first post and Avetis’ post that people’s reactions in an emergency can be unpredictable and sometimes different than one would expect. One reaction that I was really struck by was that of Dr. Fujii when he found out that he was one of only a handful of doctors that survived the blast. Instead of becoming totally overwhelmed by the 10,000 patients that lined up outside his hospital, he stayed calm and helped as many people as he could. I was also struck in the book by some of the hard moral dilemmas that people had to face. One that comes to mind is when Mr. Tanimoto gets angry at the doctors for not doing more to help the people in need. He had an incredibly hard time comprehending the reality that it was not possible to help the severely injured, and eventually “turned away, angry with himself” because he failed to see the disaster in a larger scope (51). Although it was certainly horrific to just leave people to die, the doctors had to make this difficult decision so they could focus on the people that had more of a chance to live.
ReplyDelete