89 pages • 2 hours read
Kate MooreThe Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
PrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
In 1901, an unnamed scientist is traveling to England to give a lecture. He has in his pocket a tiny vial of radium, which he has forgotten about. It was gifted to him by Marie and Pierre Curie, who discovered radium in 1898 and were making remarkable discoveries with the element. The scientist is one of the few people on earth to possess a sample of the difficult-to-extract radioactive element. In the media, radium is depicted as “enchanted,” a substance of the gods. The author points out, however, that enchantment can also involve a curse.
A few days later, the scientist finds a red, burn-like mark across his stomach, which deepens and grows more painful in the following days. Finally, he remembers the radium.
Prologue Analysis
With this short anecdote, Moore introduces the notion that radium is almost magical, calling it “enchanted” as well as “cursed.” This supernatural appellation continues throughout the book, suggesting that radium has great powers that are as yet unknown to the characters in the book and to the scientific community. Still, it is implied that some of radium’s dangers are already known despite its recent discovery, and much is still unknown about its capabilities and dangers.
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