VISIONS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: KENNETH BURKE’S CONSUMMATION PRINCIPLE AND THE MANHATTAN PROJECT by DAVID ERLAND ISAKSEN Bachelor of Arts, 2009 University of South-Eastern Norway Bø, Norway Master of Arts, 2010 University of Central Lancashire Preston, United Kingdom Master of Arts, 2012 Brigham Young University Provo, Utah Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of AddRan College of Liberal Arts Texas Christian University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate in Philosophy May 2020 Copyright by David Erland Isaksen 2020 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The first person I want to thank is my wife, Kaja-Lena Isaksen. Without her faith in me, I would probably never have embarked on such an ambitious project in the first place, and her love and support has sustained me through these years. She has also been my first reader and critic, giving me feedback on my writing and helping me to think through my research and conclusions. If we are the parents of the dissertation, then I also need to thank the grandparents of it. First of all, my own parents, Jeanne and Rolf Isaksen, who have provided much needed childcare and relief during critical writing periods and have been cheering me on. Next, the “spiritual” grandparents of the dissertation. The first of these, chronologically, is Gregory Clark. His course in rhetorical criticism at BYU introduced me to the works of Kenneth Burke and his weekly feedback on my research reports helped me to think and write as an academic. Next, Jack Selzer took the time at the 2011 Kenneth Burke Society conference to listen to my master’s thesis project and give me the crucial connection to Burke’s former student Ruth “Cookie” Liebling Goldstone. He is also the external reader on the dissertation committee and has given me much valuable feedback and encouragement. Another reader, who sadly retired before I could complete the dissertation, is Richard Leo Enos. His love of classical rhetoric was infectious, and made it clear to me in my first semester at TCU that I had come to the right place. His almost instant feedback on my chapters was also a great help. I am also grateful to Carrie Leverenz who was willing to take his place on the committee and ask me important questions about my project. Brad Lucas has, in addition to his very precise and insightful comments, made my experience in the TCU doctoral program one where I always felt heard and seen and cared ii for. And, of course, the grandmother of this dissertation, Ann George, who in addition to being one of the top experts on Kenneth Burke and New Rhetorics, has been the best committee chair I could hope for and the primary audience in my mind as I was writing this dissertation. Her sharp eye for details and incisive comments have been invaluable and have helped me a lot in my development as a researcher and writer, and she has also been a constant source of encouragement and comfort whenever I felt a bit lost or hopeless in the process. On this journey, she has been my faithful guide. I would also like to thank the former students of Kenneth Burke who helped me understand indexing and shared their papers with me, in particular Suzanne Shepherd, Ruth “Cookie” Liebling Goldstone, and Barbara Nowak. I would also like to thank Riva M. Poor, Mary Lou P. Schram, Diana G. Valenti, Sheila T. Dobbin, Joan Clifford, and Judith G. Speyer for sharing their experiences as Burke’s students. Many thanks also to Ann Burkhardt, Kenneth Burke’s former colleague, and Gretchen Dwyer and Susan D. Corcoran at Bennington College who helped me get in contact with Burke’s former students. I would also like to thank Michael Burke who, after the KBS conference in 2017 allowed me to visit Kenneth Burke’s home in Andover and look at some of Burke’s own indexing notes, and Kyle Jensen and Krista Ratcliffe who (along with Jack Selzer) led an extremely helpful research seminar on Kenneth Burke and “The War of Words” at the RSA Summer Institute in 2015. Lastly, I want to thank my children for their patience with me and for accepting when “Daddy is working on his project” (most of the time). My love to Zoey, Joseph, Ida, Jonathan, Linnea, and Daniel. You were always with me. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv List of figures with titles and page references ................................................................................ v Chapter 1: Dissertation Introduction and Consummation .............................................................. 1 Chapter 2: Indexing as a Method to Indicate Consummation in Verbal Structures ..................... 42 Chapter 3: Three Visions of Nuclear Weapons among the Manhattan Project Scientists .......... 116 Chapter 4: Reception of the Three Visions of Nuclear Weapons Among Los Alamos Scientists ..................................................................................................................................................... 177 Conclusion: Consummation, Indexing, and the Manhattan Project ........................................... 242 Appendix A: Suzanne Shepherd’s Indexing Charts with Transcription ..................................... 260 Appendix B: Announcing the Bombing at Hiroshima ................................................................ 264 Appendix C: Robert Wilson’s Bomb Sketch with Transcription ............................................... 269 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 270 iv LIST OF FIGURES WITH TITLES AND PAGE REFERENCES Figure 1 Chart of hierarchy of terms in Marxism, compiled by Suzanne Shepherd .................... 82 Figure 2 Chart of hierarchy of terms in Thomism, compiled by Suzanne Shepherd .................... 88 Figure 3. Hierarchy of terms for “Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima,” 2 levels. .............. 101 Figure 4 Hierarchy of terms for “Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima,” 3 levels. ............... 102 Figure 5 Hierarchy of terms for “Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima,” “atomic bomb”- pyramid. ...................................................................................................................................... 105 Figure 6 Hierarchy of terms for “Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima, 3 levels with “atomic bomb”-pyramid integrated. ......................................................................................................... 106 Figure 7 Complete hierarchy of terms for “Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima, 4 levels .. 108 Figure 8 Outline of the form of the experiment .......................................................................... 126 Figure 9: Hierarchy for the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum. .......................................................... 139 Figure 10 Hierarchy for negative terms in the Los Alamos Primer ............................................ 146 Figure 11 Hierarchy for positive terms in the Los Alamos Primer ............................................. 148 Figure 12 Subhierarchy of terms for “maximize damage” ......................................................... 149 Figure 13 Hierarchy for “the project” ......................................................................................... 166 Figure 14 Top three levels of “the project” with “the weapon” hierarchy included ................... 167 Figure 15 Hierarchy for “the question of control” ...................................................................... 168 Figure 16 Cycle of Terms in Bohr’s Memorandum to President Roosevelt ............................... 172 Figure 17 Hierarchy of Oppenheimer’s ascesis of peace through striving ................................. 186 Figure 18 Hierarchy of Oppenheimer’s letter to Enrico Fermi ................................................... 190 Figure 19 Complete hierarchy and dramatic unfolding in Oppenheimer’s speech to ALAS ..... 203 Figure 20 Wilson’s sketch for boosting fission bombs with cadmium and tritium .................... 223 v Visions of Nuclear Weapons: Kenneth Burke’s Consummation Principle and the Manhattan Project Chapter 1: Dissertation Introduction and Consummation Consummation is a central term in Kenneth Burke’s critical vocabulary, but there is much disagreement among Burke scholars about the meaning and use of the term. Since he referred to the development of the atomic bomb as a classic example of consummation, I argue that a critical study of the discourse among the Los Alamos scientists during 1943-46 can help to clarify what Burke meant by this concept and show how this creative motive can affect a community. The study seeks to understand how consummation develops in a group and how it may be diffused, and to develop a method to analyze it, which can be transported to study other discourses where there may be a similar drive. The Problem In “A Rhetoric of Form: The Early Burke and Reader-Response Criticism,” Greig Henderson writes that we can divide Kenneth Burke’s scholarly project based on three creative motives which were at the center of his attention: self-expression, communication, and consummation (Henderson 127). Kenneth Burke himself discusses these three stages in his 1967 afterword to Counter-Statement, titled “Curriculum Criticum”: “The step from the opening chapter . to the next essay