"There are no extraordinary men... only extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to face." Admiral William Frederick Halsey Jr. (Bull) (American Naval Officer who led vigorous campaigns during World War II, 1882-1959) Benevolence Forged by War We often find ourselves facing dramatic events in our lives that force us to reevaluate and redefine ourselves themselves. Such extraordinary circumstances try to crush the heart of human nature in us. It is in that moment, like carbon under pressure, that the humanity in us shatters, exposing our primal nature, or transforms into a strong, crystalline radiance of compassion and self-sacrifice. The books Night written by Elie Wiesel and Hiroshima written by John Hersey illustrate how the usual way of life could change unexpectedly and how these changes could affect the human within us. Both books show how civilian lives were disrupted by World War II, what devastation these people had to endure, and how the horrific circumstances of war were sometimes able to bring out the best in ordinary people. In the book Hiroshima, the author paints the image of the city and the breaking point in the lives of its inhabitants: before and after the fall of the "Fat Boy". Six people, six different lives, all destroyed by the nuclear explosion. The extraordinary pain and devastation of one hundred thousand people is expressed through the prism of six stories seen by the author. The lives of Miss Toshiko Sasaki and Dr. Masakazu Fujii serve as two contrasting examples of the opposite directions that the victims' lives had taken after the disaster. In her "past life" Toshiko was an employee of the personnel department; she had a family and a boyfriend. At a quarter past eight on August 6, 1945, the bombing took away her parents and a little brother, partially disabled her and destroyed her personal life. Dr. Fujii had a small private hospital and led a quiet and cheerful life, quietly enjoying the fruits of his labor. He was reading a newspaper on the porch of his clinic when he saw the bright flash of the explosion nearly a mile away from the epicenter. Both of these people survived the hell of the atomic bomb, but the catastrophe affected them differently. Somehow, escaping certain death has made Dr. Fujii much more worried and selfish. He began to drown in self-indulgence and completely lost compassion and responsibility towards his patients.