Hersey uses similes and other examples of figurative language. An example is "Its front hall, packed with rolls of bedding and clothing, looked like a cool cave filled with fat cushions" (5). In this simile, Hersey compares the hall of the house to a cave. He also uses metaphors, such as "Such clouds of dust had risen that there was a sort of twilight around" (6). In this metaphor, the dust is compared to the darkness of twilight. Later, he says of a man caught between timber that he was "like a morsel suspended between two large chopsticks" (11). This is another example of a simile.

Hersey also uses personification. In the following sentence, he writes that the house was bordered by "a large, finicky rock garden" (5). In this sentence, he implies that the rock garden has the qualities of a human. Finally, Hersey uses alliteration, or the repetition of initial sounds, such as "splendid silks" (12) and "fission fragments" (18).

The whole book is written as a series of interconnected flashbacks from people who were present during the atomic bomb detonation over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. The book uses elements of fiction, including access to the characters' feelings and dialogue, to convey fact.

Hersey's Hiroshima was published in its first iteration in 1946, only a year after the U.S. atom-bombed the city and World War II ended. The American public had been indoctrinated to think of the Japanese as the enemy. Hersey wanted, in contrast, to persuade people to feel sympathy for the Japanese as victims of a horrible technology, as well as to cast that technology—the atom bomb—as the true enemy.

Three rhetorical or persuasive devices Hersey uses to do this are, first, personal narratives of six ordinary Japanese people going about their lives the morning of the blast, full of descriptive details meant to raise our sympathy for them. For example, on page one, Hersey describes exactly what Dr. Fujii was doing at the time the bomb dropped: sitting cross-legged on his front porch reading. This kind of intimate detail makes the people like Dr. Fujii who suffered from the bombing real, relatable human beings just like you and me, thus raising our sympathy for what they underwent.

Hersey also uses the rhetorical device of logos or logic (often through facts and statistics) to help readers understand the enormity of the devastation. He goes back and forth between the individual lives he describes in detail and "big picture" statistics. For example, he notes on page two that 100,000 people were killed in the initial blast. That soberingly large number raises our sympathy.

Third, Hersey employs a flat, journalistic voice in describing what happened. Hersey reports what happens, rather than reacting to it, and then gets out of the way. The contrast between the deadpan style and the enormity of what happened makes the reading all the more wrenching. For example, on page 69, Hersey mentions people's eyeballs melting from the heat of the blast, but does so in a flat way that leaves us room to imagine the horror of that occurrence.

John Hersey's Hiroshima contains numerous examples of rhetorical devices (or literary devices). Typical literary devices are metaphors, similes, flashbacks, allusions, or hyperboles. In the text, three examples of rhetorical devices are as follows.

Direct Characterization- In direct characterization, the author (narrator) explicitly defines a character. On page three of the novel (published by Mass Market Publishers), Mr. Tanimoto is described precisely. Not only are his physical characteristics defined (small, with black hair, prominent "frontal bones," and a mustache), some of his internal characteristics are defined as well ("quick to talk, laugh, and cry").

Personification- Personification is the giving of human characteristics to non-human/ non-living things. On page four, the following is found: "the day promised to be uncomfortable." Here, the day is given the ability to promise something. This is a human characteristic.

Simile- A simile is a comparison of two dissimilar things (using "like" or "as"). On page five, a simile is found in the following sentence. " Its front hall looked like a cave full of fat cushions. In the comparison, the hall is compared to a cave (using "like").