Summary: The Zero Meter Diving Team
In the short story, “The Zero Meter Diving Team”, Jim Shepard illustrates someone coping with death and distress by looking at the past and changing perspective for the future. As Boris reminisces about the nuclear explosion, he reveals his view of his brothers and the catastrophic event. Boris then concludes about the explosion and what it means to him, to society, and in science. Overall, Boris’ view of the event gives light to its outcome, displaying the effects of this kind of disaster and what it entails in the lives of humans.
In the beginning, Boris describes his brothers and working at the nuclear plant to establish his strong relationship with them before the explosion, and the magnitude of the explosion itself. He begins with the …show more content…
The irregularity of the explosion is described through its relation to safe radioactive conditions, with the “radioactivity of the ejected fuel reach[ing] twenty thousand roentgens per hour” while the “maximum permissible dose… is five roentgens per year” (11). With the amount of radioactivity completely unstable, citizens are told to leave the city, and “told to collect their papers and indispensable items, along with food for three days… never coming back” (16). The entire city evacuates, even if some people were still “intensely radioactive” (16). Although the radioactivity in people was irrefutable, there were no “documented case[s] of radiation sickness among civilians… citizens… were accused of radiophobia” (21). The evidence for the event was nonexistent, and although the statement, “Science requires victims” refers to the nuclear power plant, it is invalid that no progress can be made with an absence of documentation. For his opinion on Mikhael after the incident, Boris admits Mikhael “was always the boy [he’d] most resented and the boy [he’d] always wanted to be… he’d been the one who’d made himself, when he’d had to be, solitary and unreachable” (18). Although these traits led to his death, Mikhael sets the bar for Boris, and Boris ends the story believing that he had been the brother Mikhael hoped he would be (23). Overall, Boris concludes his opinions on how ineffective the incident was on the world as a whole, despite the evolution between him and his
In the beginning, Boris describes his brothers and working at the nuclear plant to establish his strong relationship with them before the explosion, and the magnitude of the explosion itself. He begins with the …show more content…
The irregularity of the explosion is described through its relation to safe radioactive conditions, with the “radioactivity of the ejected fuel reach[ing] twenty thousand roentgens per hour” while the “maximum permissible dose… is five roentgens per year” (11). With the amount of radioactivity completely unstable, citizens are told to leave the city, and “told to collect their papers and indispensable items, along with food for three days… never coming back” (16). The entire city evacuates, even if some people were still “intensely radioactive” (16). Although the radioactivity in people was irrefutable, there were no “documented case[s] of radiation sickness among civilians… citizens… were accused of radiophobia” (21). The evidence for the event was nonexistent, and although the statement, “Science requires victims” refers to the nuclear power plant, it is invalid that no progress can be made with an absence of documentation. For his opinion on Mikhael after the incident, Boris admits Mikhael “was always the boy [he’d] most resented and the boy [he’d] always wanted to be… he’d been the one who’d made himself, when he’d had to be, solitary and unreachable” (18). Although these traits led to his death, Mikhael sets the bar for Boris, and Boris ends the story believing that he had been the brother Mikhael hoped he would be (23). Overall, Boris concludes his opinions on how ineffective the incident was on the world as a whole, despite the evolution between him and his