“You and the Atom Bomb” by George Orwell summary, British Literature - III, 2nd Year 3rd Semester, B.A English Literature

 

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BA English Literature

[2nd Year, 3rd Semester]

British Literature 

2.4. “You and the Atom Bomb” by George Orwell

About Author:

Eric Arthur Blair known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. Best known for his novels Animal Farm (1945), the anti-utopian novel and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a chilling warning against totalitarianism.

Born in Bengal, India, in 1903 and died of tuberculosis in London, England  in 1950.

His first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) was based on his experiences after he left the police.

About Prose:

It was originally published by the Tribune on October 19, 1945 within two months after atomic bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan by the only country ever to have used them to kill people and destroy cities, viz., the U.S.A. In addition, it was clear that the groundwork for his novel, ‘1984’ had been completed by this writing. It was reprinted as ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’ in 1968.

Its fame arises from Orwell’s coinage of a new term for the permanent standoff the bomb would foster between two great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union: the “cold war.”

Summary:

       “You and the Atomic Bomb” essay highlights the devastating power of the Atomic Bomb and discusses how it could change the balance of power and the future course of humanity.

Orwell considers it a threat to world peace and order. Even if the bomb could not be mass-manufactured, its possession merely was a major threat and for whatever end they used it, the loss was always going to be double.

The idea of the atomic bomb was devastating in the sense that whether it was for war or to extract peace, it was going to make humanity suffer in every way.  In a way, he highlights that the destructive power of the Atom Bomb had been miscalculated and misunderstood.

Orwell notes that the information and diagrams the newspapers had published including that of protons and neutrons and how atomic bombs worked were of no meaning to the common man. There had been a lot of useless reiteration of the same statement that the atomic bomb instead of being under the control of a nation must be controlled by an international body. However, the one question media and others had purposefully avoided was that how easy or difficult it was to make these bombs.

Orwell notes that governments and media were raising questions unrelated to the main topic. The public was either misguided or confused over the topic and this could cause more fear and confusion. Whatever little information people had was by virtue of President Truman’s decision to keep secrets from USSR.

Some months earlier than America dropped the bomb on Japan, there were rumors that physicists had split the atom and a devastating weapon was soon going to be within every nation’s reach. People thought it would be easy to produce one and some lunatic could blow the entire civilization any time and then have a laugh in some lonely corner as if he had lit off fireworks.

Truman said that producing the bomb was an expensive affair and very few nations in the world were capable of making it. Orwell notes that this is the most important point because, in this manner instead of changing the course of history, the weapon was only going to add momentum to the dangerous trends that had been growing intense for the last dozen years.

Another important problem that Orwell highlights in his work is that the atomic bomb was never going to empower the people. He cites examples from history where simple weapons have empowered the weak but the more complex weapons have mainly helped the strong. He cites the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie.

Common people get a chance when the dominant weapon is simple. In this way, the modern weapons of warfare like planes, bombs, and airplanes are fundamentally tyrannical whereas crossbows and muskets are fundamentally democratic. So while the making of the atom bomb meant the emergence of new loci of power, it also meant control leaving the hands of the common people. The increased power of the states has decreased the control common man held in the state of affairs and his ability to wage a war for his freedom.       

When James Burnham wrote The Managerial Revolution it seemed probable to many Americans that the Germans would win the European end of the war, and it was therefore natural to assume that Germany and not Russia would dominate the Eurasian land mass, while Japan would remain master of East Asia. This was a miscalculation, but it does not affect the main argument.

For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H. G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over.

Orwell further clarifies in the next paragraph, advanced military technology took power and control from people’s hands to the hands of state and government. It always left people with no power and control. Before the recent advances in military technology, things were simple and people used simple weapons to wage a war for freedom against their oppressors.

The atomic bomb may complete the process by robbing the exploited classes and peoples of all power to revolt, and at the same time putting the possessors of the bomb on a basis of military equality.

        Increased efficiency of the military structure has always given people less space to mind their affairs freely. “Peace that is no peace”

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