Literary Theory vs The Atomic Bomb

When I first enrolled in this class, I asked myself why study the Nuclear Pacific through Literature? I was talking to Christine, and she said that Literature may not be the best way to understand the Nuclear Pacific for Literature is a very periphery way of conveying information. There are many different methods of interpreting Literature. We can examine it through close reading, look for signs, look at the text's structure, through Marxist theory, through psychoanalytics, etc.

However, what is the point of literary theory? When we are studying a topic like the atomic bomb, which now has the capability to destroy the world threefold, why does something like Literary Theory matter? In an introduction to Literary Theory, Terry Eagleton writes, "anyone who believed that literary theory was more important than such matters would no doubt be considered somewhat eccentric, but perhaps only a little less eccentric than those who consider that the two topics might be somehow related."

We must understand that literary theory is political. We are told that literature is "vitally engaged with the living situations of men and women: it is concrete rather than abstract." However, Nadel writes how post-modernist works about the atomic bomb, like Hiroshima, are symptomatic of the ways that personal experience and history are becoming separated. Postmodernist literary interpretation can be seen as the extremism of literary theory; it tends to argue that historical and social realities aren't true.

However, when postmodern literature attempts to flee modern ideologies, it often gets unconsciously caught up with them in the "aesthetic" or "unpolitical" language it uses. It tends to think that the contemplative individual is the source of understanding. We must understand that literature is what gets taught in schools, and the ways that we interpret literature are inherently politicized. We must remember that the object of Literature, or the medium, is not of the highest importance, for Literature is what is taught in higher education. What is important is to ask ourselves what is literature, why do we study literature and how are students using the information.