So Death Does Touch the Resurrection. Religion, Literature and the Nuclear Bomb

The aim of this paper is to present the religious and the literary inspirations of the Los Alamos narratives by focusing on Oppenheimer, who both provides the literary contexts for the story of the bomb and becomes a hero of the tales that emerge. My principal sources are Richard Rhodes's Making of the Atomic Bomb, a Pulitzer-winning detailed factual account of how the nuclear weapon was conceived and produced, as well as fictional or semi-fictional depictions of the life Oppenheimer and his men led in the New Mexico desert. The latter include Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry by MIT graduate professor-turned-novelist Thomas McMahon; Los Alamos, a thriller by Joseph Kanon; and Atomic Dreams. The Lost Journal of Robert Oppenheimer, a graphic novel by Jonathan Elias and Jazan Wild.