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Click the above images to get Video explanation for the prose “You and the Atom Bomb” by George Orwell
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.
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