Expository text: "Hiroshima" by John Hersey

The human mind cannot comprehend the split-second deaths of 100 000 people when the atomic bomb hit the people of Japan in August, 1945. However this event, which has changed the world forever, can be relived through the lives of six survivors in John Hersey's Hiroshima. Expository texts such as the aforementioned often present powerful social issues which challenge not only the reader from the contemporary Western culture but also the reader from the 1946 American society. Hersey employs …

…feelings of sympathy, anger and remorse. Hersey employs techniques such as selection of detail, language, tone and point of view to encourage readers to be challenged by the powerful social values; changing priorities, Japan's reaction to the crisis and moral and ethical issues which are embedded in the text. Overall Hersey exposes the true side of war to the readers; the side which is not glorified but elicits extreme loss of life and untold suffering.