A Doctor's Joural Entry for August 6

The poem, A Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945 is penned down in the form of an entry in a journal by a doctor for keeping records. The entry gave the readers a vivid picture of how the people were taken aback when atomic bombs were dropped on their city of Hiroshima in 1945 during the Second World War.

Narrative Technique:

Vikram Seth’s poetic style has many features like the use of prose-pattern, epithets, images, wit, humor and irony. The poem is in a form of journal entry made by a Hibakusha (a Japanese word for a bomb survivor) on August 6, 1945. The use of this journal form for writing poetry is ingenious because this kind of poetry requires no rhyme pattern or other poetic devices. The style is colloquial, clipped. The poem has no rhyming scheme or stanzas, it is a continuous narration of what happened on a particular day.

In the beginning of the poem, one can see the account of the impact of the atomic bombs on the city. The poet also uses Hyperbole (exaggeration) for highlighting the current situation.

“The roof, the walls, and, as it seemed the world

Collapsed in timber and debris, dust swirled

Around me.”

An atmosphere of horror, fear and panic too is created all around the narrator and the narrator gives a dreadful account of it in the next few lines.

“It took some time for me to understand

The friction on their burns caused so much pain

They feared to chafe flesh against flesh again

Those who could, shuffled in blank parade.”

Vikram Seth has personified ‘loneliness’ to describe the helplessness of the survivors in A Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945.

“What choice had we? A dreadful loneliness

Came over me when she had gone. My mind

Ran at high speed, my body crept behind.”

Lyrical in Spirit:

Lyric Poetry deals with the poet’s own feelings, his state of mind and perceptions. A Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945 is a poem about the poet’s own sorrows, feelings. The poem expresses the personal torments and sufferings...