41 pages • 1 hour read
Denise KiernanThe Girls of Atomic City
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Celia
Celia is a “wavy-haired 24-year-old” (3) born to immigrant parents in a declining mining town in the South. Celia is like many of the other women at CEW: young, poor, and from a rural background. In fact, the Project specifically seeks to employ such women because they believe that they are well-suited to direct instruction and do not ask questions. This proves to be the case with Celia who easily accepts the Project’s secrecy. In this, she is representative of the majority of Oak Ridgers. Like so many others, takes her job based primarily on the limited description that she will be helping “to bring a speedy and victorious end to the war” (7). That is to say, she represents the common motivation of doing her part of the war effort. Although when she first arrives at CEW, she is horrified by the mud and has to be carried over it to avoid ruining her new shoes, Celia grows in independence. Reflecting the changes occurring as growing numbers of women enter the workforce, she insists on paying her own way with dates. Later, the she experiences the secrecy of the community from a different vantage point when she is pregnant and no longer working. Suffering severe morning sickness, she feels isolated and finds the inability to talk about everyday things with her husband, neighbors, or family particularly tough.
Kattie
Kattie works as a janitor, cleaning plant K-25. Her husband Willie, who works to maintain the train tracks entering the reservation, moved to CEW before her and reported back that there was work for her too. However, they are not allowed to bring their children with them to Tennessee because children are not welcome in CEW, though it is implied that this rule only applies to black parents like Kattie. In this respect others, Kattie’s experiences offer a window into racial discrimination at CEW. The 1942 legislation Executive Order 8802 declared that there would be no racial discrimination in the defense industries but while the government chooses not to enforce this at the Clinton Engineering Project. Kattie is not even allowed to live with her husband. Instead, she lives in the Pen, a fenced off area solely for black women. Recreational facilities are segregated too and the food in the black canteen is of such poor quality that Kattie gets food poisoning, as do many other people of color. In response to this, Kattie also offers an example of how Oak Ridgers find inventive ways to bring a little bit of everyday normality into the strange, secretive, and segregated world of CEW. Determined to cook at home despite regulations banning it, she asks a workman to use metal scraps to make her a biscuit pan, and uses this to cook on the stove in Willie’s hut, bringing some home-comforts to the heavily-guarded compound.
Jane
A local, Jane had intended to study engineering at the University of Tennessee but was rebuffed by sexist attitudes there. This does not stop her excelling at another course—statistics—and gaining a great many job offers on graduation. She eventually takes a position with CEW because she wishes to stay close to home in order to support her widower father. Before she can start the job, however, she is subjected to a rigorous investigation that highlights quite how high security is for even slightly higher-ranking jobs. Despite this, Jane actually enjoys some aspects of the Project’s secrecy. At a time where intelligent, skilled women are only recently able to take positions of such significance, it is perhaps not surprising that Jane moments that highlight that she is doing something noteworthy and important.
Virginia
Virginia also encounters the Project’s security while she waits to start her job. Although she has passed all the relevant checks, her paperwork has been misplaced and she is waiting for clearance in the bull pen. Eventually one of the “bull pen regulars” (68) offers her a new job, in human resources rather than the lab to which she was originally assigned, and she accepts simply so she can finally leave the bull pen. Once she finally transfers to a lab, Virginia works with what she calls “yellowcake.” She knows that she is working with plutonium but has been trained to never acknowledge this. Her position is a great opportunity because she finds herself on the frontlines of scientific advancements that she had once only read about.
