How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
He got up at six every morning and took an hour's walk with his small woolly dog, Chiko. He was slowing down a bit. His memory, like the world's, was getting spotty. (5.196)
These are the final lines of the book, and they are pretty brutal. Hersey leaves off the story with the man who (like the author himself, perhaps) saw a real purpose in returning to memories of Hiroshima, likely out of a desire to prevent history from repeating itself. However, Hersey notes that the world's memory was "getting spotty" forty years after the event, which means the book closes on a kind of melancholy note… just not quite as freaking melancholy as the note it opened on.