Voices From Chernobyl Final Summary

Just thirty years ago, April 26th, 1986, one of the world’s largest nuclear meltdowns occurred in Pripyat, Ukraine. The workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were running a system test on reactor four and there was a sudden, unexpected power surge. When the workers attempted to conduct an emergency shut off even more power was produced. This caused the reactor vessel to crack and allow air into the core. The core ignited and the fire sent a large plume of highly radioactive smoke. For the next fourteen years, 350,400 people were evacuated and resettled from the most contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Now this was thirty years ago but if someone was asked if they knew what Chernobyl is they could probably give a correct …show more content…
The people of Pripyat saw the smoke coming from the reactor and left almost immediately. Svetlana Alexievich was a Ukrainian who studied journalism at the University of Minsk. Years after the Chernobyl disaster Alexievich interviewed hundreds of survivors from Pripyat and the surrounding villages. She combined these interviews or monologues into her book titled Voices From Chernobyl. In one of the early monologues in the section one of the book labeled The Land of the Dead there is monologue from a father titled ‘Monologue About a Whole Life Written Down on Doors” but the father is talking about how he is a normal person. He then flips it by saying “And then one day you’re turned into a Chernobyl person, an animal that everyone 's interested in, and that no one knows anything about.” This shows how quickly something someone’s identity can change because of an event. The father explains his tragedy of his wife and daughter getting sick from the radiation and he ends his monologue with this statement, “I want to bear witness: my daughter died from Chernobyl. And they want us to forget about it.” This statement shows that even though the daughter didn 't die in her home in the fire or explosion. She still