Hemingway's Requiem for Battle Fields: "Atomic Jokes" after Hiroshima/Nagasaki in Across the River and into the Trees

This essay focuses on references to the atomic bomb in Across the River and into the Trees (1950) and Hemingway's biographical materials to examine the impact the introduction of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima/Nagasaki had on Hemingway as a "battlefield writer." Richard Cantwell makes jokes about atomic bombs just as Hemingway did. Using Freud's distinction between jokes and humor, this essay argues that these "atomic jokes" can be best understood when we consider the changes nuclear weapons introduce to traditional notions of warfare and battlefields, and to Hemingway's style.