Trinity is historical fiction that provides glimpses of J. Robert Oppenheimer, 'the father of the atomic bomb', from the perspective of some of his contemporaries.
First, a brief overview of the (real) historical Oppenheimer.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer, born in 1904, was a brilliant American theoretical physicist and a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
During World War II, Oppenheimer was recruited to head the Manhattan Project, a program to develop the atomic bomb (A-bomb) at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory. The first A-bomb was successfully detonated during the Trinity Test in July, 1945.
Entrance to Los Alamos National Laboratory
The Trinity Test. This led Oppenheimer to recall verses from the Bhagavad Gita”Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Oppenheimer and a military man examining the ground after the Trinity Test
In August 1945, A-bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after which Japan surrendered.
The mushroom cloud from the Nagasaki “Fat Man” bomb, August 9, 1945
After the war, Oppenheimer became an important figure in the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). From this powerful position, Oppenheimer opposed building the hydrogen bomb and lobbied for sharing nuclear technology with Russia, to prevent an arms race. These notions were wildly unpopular with powerful people, and led to 1954 McCarthy era hearings at the AEC.
Oppenheimer testifying at the Atomic Energy Commission
Among other things, the hearings revealed Oppenheimer's former connections to the American Communist Party and divulged embarrassing details about his marital infidelities (in front of his wife, no less). This resulted in Oppenheimer's fall from grace, and the revocation of his security clearance.
To minimize repercussions against himself, Oppenheimer 'outed' friends and co-workers who were communist sympathizers or otherwise compromised.
After John F. Kennedy became President in 1960, Oppenheimer's reputation was rehabilitated and he was awarded the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award. Regardless of the controversy, Oppenheimer served as the director of Princeton's 'Institute for Advanced Study' from 1947 to 1966.
Oppenheimer receiving the Enrico Fermi Award
*****
Oppenheimer, generally known as Oppie, is closely connected with the massively destructive - and potentially Earth-destroying - atomic bomb. This makes him a controversial figure whose persona is conflated with the devastation caused by nuclear weapons. In this book, seven fictional characters recount stories about the physicist, based on his real life. The narrators' tales aren't necessarily straightforward, being influenced by events in their own lives.
- Sam Casal - an intelligence agent tasked with keeping tabs on Oppie - describes the married physicist sneaking away from his Berkeley lab in 1943, to have an assignation with a lover in San Francisco. The woman, Jean Tatlock, is Oppenheimer's former girlfriend and a communist supporter. Afterwards, when Oppie is back home, the agent keeps Jean under surveillance, to detect possible traitorous activity. Six months later Jean commits suicide for unknown reasons.
Jean Tatlock
- Grace Goodman, a member of the Women's Army Corps (WAC), works at Los Alamos in the mid-1940s. Grace observes Oppie from the perspective of a woman in love with Oppie's married colleague Jack. Grace describes Oppie as a charismatic figure who wears a porkpie hat and whose habits (like smoking Chesterfield cigarettes) and mannerisms (like flicking ashes with his finger) are copied by people in his circle.
Oppenheimer with his signature porkpie hat and cigarette
When married Jack breaks up with Grace following an abortion, the WAC purposely takes up with a divorced 'wife beater', then taunts Jack with her (accidental) facial bruise.
Grace compulsively watches Oppie and Jack as they go off to conduct the Trinity Test, which she describes as follows: “Then the earth under our feet lurched toward the mountains, and the mountains tilted a foot to the right, and the trees leaped off the sides of the mountains.”
- Andries Van Den Berg, Oppie's old friend and colleague from Berkeley, describes Oppie and his wife Kitty visiting him in Paris in 1949. Van Den Berg is not permitted back in the United States, perhaps because of Oppie's disclosures.
Kitty Oppenheimer
Van Den Berg talks about the fun he and his ex-wife Barbara used to have with Oppie and Kitty. Van Den Berg - who's distracted by his young girlfriend - remembers everything wrong, however, as Barbara later reminds him in a sardonic letter that alludes to his infidelities.
- Sally Connelly is a secretary who works for Oppie at Princeton in 1954. Prior to Sally's employment, her twin sister - who compulsively collected horrible photos of bomb victims in Nagasaki and Hiroshima - died from anorexia. Unlike her sister, Sally is overweight, and a compulsive cereal eater. Sally has low expectations for a blind date with a Princeton man named Stan who - to her surprise - falls for and marries her.
Sally's marriage isn't a success, and she begins wasting away like her sibling....until she weighs less than 90 pounds. However, no one - including Stan and Oppie - notices. When Oppie finally becomes aware of Sally, he insists on telling her his 'whole story.' By now Oppie regrets his role in the building of the atom bomb and opposes development of the even more destructive hydrogen bomb.
- Lía Peón is half of a lesbian couple living on the island of St. John, where Oppie and Kitty build a home in the late 1950s. Oppie and Kitty are friends with the gay couple, who were driven out of the United States by discrimination against homosexuals. Oppie's family lives in tents on Lia's property while their home is being constructed. Oppie may have blabbed about Lia (as he did many other people) during his testimony at the Atomic Energy Commission.
Oppenheimer and friends on the island of St. John
Oppie shows some mettle in St. John's when a drunken neighbor gets aggressive about a 'noisy party.' Oppie also saves a turtle with his daughter, showing his softer side.
Oppenheimer with his wife and children on the island of St. John
- Tim Schmidt, a student at a Massachusetts prep school in 1963, talks about Oppie coming to speak at his school. This engagement is part of Oppie's professional/personal/political rehabilitation, engineered by his colleagues and friends.
While Tim is talking about Oppie, he recalls his activist mother showing up at an event organized by his previous school and hustling Tim out. He wouldn't like this to happen again.
- Helen Childs, a journalist who lived near the Oppenheimers when she was a child, tells the longest story. On her way to interview Oppie at Princeton in 1966 - when the physicist is dying of cancer - Helen is reminded of her former husband. She relates the entire history of their courtship and marriage, and talks about her husband's infidelity during her pregnancy. Hubby's betrayal almost destroys Helen, and she in turn badgers him mercilessly - like Oppie was badgered before and during his hearings.
Helen also recalls Kitty Oppenheimer, who drank too much - perhaps because her husband attracted women like a magnet attracts iron nails.
Preparing to question Oppie, Helen determines to be relentless and aggressive, to squeeze 'the truth' out of him. Perhaps Helen's unfortunate experience with her spouse makes her angry at all men, but that's not clear. For me this last section was overwritten, boring, and hard to get through.
Oppenheimer became ill and died of cancer
Oppenheimer was an enigmatic figure, and patching together these characters' sketches of the scientist still doesn't give us a clear picture of the man or his beliefs or his behavior.
Oppie came to deplore nuclear weapons and to feel guilty about his role in their creation. Realistically, though, if Oppie hadn't made the first A-bomb someone else would have. And it's just as well it wasn't someone in Germany (IMO).
I found the book interesting and imaginative, but it's not very enlightening about Robert Oppenheimer.
Rating: 3 stars
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