I really liked this image because I’ve actually done floating lanterns before, so it feels more personal to me. To me, lanterns in water symbolize prayer, remembrance, and reflection. Even though this painting is about the bomb, it doesn’t feel chaotic or violent. It feels quiet. The lanterns floating on the river suggest that even after so much destruction, there is still space for honoring the dead and hoping for peace. Unlike the hellfire or despair sections, this image feels like it’s looking forward. The light from the lanterns stands out against the dark water and sky, which makes the hope feel fragile but still present.

This section honestly made me really sad. The mother holding her child is such a universal image of love and protection, and seeing it set against flames makes it feel completely shattered. The mother’s face looks stunned and almost vacant, as if she doesn’t even have the energy to react. Dower’s description of mothers trying to nurse dead babies or infants nursing from injured mothers is one of the most heartbreaking lines in the essay. It shows how the bomb didn’t just destroy buildings; obviously, it broke the most basic human bond. The uncertainty of whether either the mother or child will survive makes the image even more painful. It feels like the future itself is fragile in this moment.

This image embodies the “ghost” theme not through wandering survivors but through absence. The skeleton seated in an intact barber’s chair transforms an ordinary space into something haunted. Unlike the chaotic hellfire scenes, this painting emphasizes eerie stillness. The six-day delay underscores abandonment as death lingering in familiar places without ritual or recognition. The figure is both present and absent, a physical remnant stripped of identity. The bomb leaves behind spaces and bodies that feel suspended between life and oblivion.

This painting sticks out to me because the flames look like waves, and they swirl and curl like a “sea of flames.” That metaphor in the caption isn’t decorative; the fire literally behaves like water. It surrounds them. The bodies are distorted and the figures don’t look stable or grounded. Limbs are blurred, lines are jagged. It feels unstable, like the world itself is collapsing. The injured girl's body looks torn, raw, vulnerable. The fact that she is being pulled emphasizes urgency, helplessness, and human connection amid chaos.

This painting makes literal what survivors repeatedly described as “hell.” Unlike the distant parachute image, this perspective places the viewer inside the inferno. The flames erase the sky and cityscape, transforming Hiroshima into a Buddhist vision of jigoku. The bodies scattered across the ground resemble figures in traditional hell as anonymous, contorted, and stripped of individuality. The phrase “living Hell in this world” collapses metaphor into reality; this was not symbolic suffering but an earthly apocalypse. Dower’s comparison to traditional depictions of hell suggests that survivors used familiar religious imagery to articulate something otherwise unspeakable.

What strikes me most about this painting is its calmness. The sky, mountains, and houses look peaceful, almost idyllic, while the parachute gently lowers the bomb. The word “cradles” is especially unsettling because it gives the bomb a sense of care or protection. This perspective mirrors the distant, technological view associated with the Enola Gay crew: a controlled, almost aesthetic image of the mushroom cloud. Dower’s point that this is where “most American narratives… end” suggests that this view avoids the human suffering below. By focusing on the serene descent, the painting exposes the gap between detached military perspective and the hellfire that will follow.