The Great Radium Girls


The story of the Great Gatsby contains lots of commentary on America during the 1920s and the negative effects wealth and status can have on a person. The main character Gatsby, one of the wealthiest men in the story, dies at the end of the story after being corrupted by his greed and ambition. Nick even describes the wealthy of the story as a “rotten crowd”, a word that implies decay and corruption (Fitzgerald 154). This story is only hypothetical, exaggerated to communicate a lesson. But what if there was a real life example of just how status can lead to corruption. 


The radium girls lived in the 1930’s and like Gatsby, the wealth and status they accumulated ultimately led to their untimely deaths. The radium girls worked in factories, painting watch faces with radium paint to make them glow in the dark. After working with the paint for a while, the girls found that their skin and clothes were beginning to glow as well. Most would assume this abnormality would be cause for concern, however it ended up having the opposite effect. Because of the large salaries the girls were receiving for their work, it became a symbol for wealth and status, and many of the girls were known to wear their best dresses to work in the hopes that they would begin to glow. Despite the numerous benefits the girls were receiving, it didn't take long for the toxic nature of the radium to catch up with them. Every one of the girls started to develop strange and deadly medical conditions as a result of handing the radioactive materials. In the end, the thing that had brought them money and status was the very same thing that killed them


Learning through stories and literature allows us to view the world from new and different perspectives, but history can be just as good a teacher. As the old saying goes, the past tends to repeat itself and from both of these stories it is clear that the message contained in each is very similar. With wealth and power comes corruption. 






Comments

  1. Riley LennonNovember 14, 2021 at 7:28 PM

    I really like how you compared these two books! I have never heard of the Radium Girls, but the story sounds very interesting and I like how you related it back to the topics we have been talking about in class because that made it easier to understand. I like the organization of your blog and how you gave backstory in the beginning to lead into your topic! Your final statement at the end made the piece come together and did a nice job of tying the subjects to a real life problem. Nice job!

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