And Then The Sky Exploded

The most important quote in the beginning of the book, And Then The Sky Exploded, was on page 166(on kindle). “I guess I was almost afraid to. Maybe afraid of what I’d find out. Maybe afraid I’d make people mad by asking. But I had a right to know.” This quote was said by Christian, and what he was supposed to know was why protesters were at his great grandpa’s funeral. The reason why they were there is because he was one of the people who made the atomic bomb that killed two hundred thousand people in Hiroshima, Japan. This quote made me think of two things.

One thing is that I thought everybody has the right to know the truth of what happened in Hiroshima and everyone should. It was a very tragic thing that happened, and for us Japanese, can not believe and forgive that they just dropped an atomic bomb, not only once but twice. What made it even worse that they were just using us as an experiment. What we could learn from this is that, people should know that there were lots of lives lost and that this should never happen again. The second thing is mainly about the book, and it foreshadows what might happen in the book. I think it is foreshadowing that he will go find out what was his great grandpa was doing. One evidence is on page 256, “I hated writing reports for school (doesn’t everybody?) and here I was writing one for … the truth behind the big secret.” This shows that he is actually curious about GG Will’s work on atomic bombs and that he will try to figure it out in the future. Also, he says that he hates writing reports, but he wrote about the project. This proves that he really wants to know what happened. Those are the two things that came to me when I read the quote.