"When Will I Be Blown Up?"
The Fear of Atomic War Between the Suez and Cuban Crisis Through Four Anglo American Cultural Products: On the Beach, Red Alert, Alas Babylon and Fail-safe
Authors
- José Joaquín Rodríguez Moreno (ES) Universidad de Cádiz
Abstract
From the Suez Crisis of 1956 to the Cuban Crisis of 1962 the tension between the Western and Eastern Blocs rose continuously, and war was a constant possibility. The American Government and some experts offered reassuring explanations and Civil Defense exercises in order to calm the population, however some fiction authors gave voice to the fears of a Nuclear War and its consequences. Through a Cultural analysis of four novels wrote by five Anglo Americans between 1957 and 1962 we can track those fears, understand it, and realize how they influenced their own time.
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