Realism In Plutopia

Prompt One: Often times when the story of the Manhattan Project is told, one hears the government and scientist side of the story that focuses on the success of the project. While focusing on the success shortcomings that the project faced is often omitted from the creation of American atomic bomb. The novel, Plutopia, reveals a rare side of the Manhattan narrative that shows the hazards and difficulties faced while undergoing research and development, especially at the expense of the blue-collar workers. Brown also tells a unique narrative, as she includes the Soviet experience in their atomic project and labels it as a story connected to the American one, whose projects moved forward in tandem.

Kate Brown offers an inside perspective

Often Soviets had spies that were in pursuit of the American technology, blueprints, and set up of their Atomic cities, “It appears, in other words, that Beria [The Soviets] wanted the American way.” Soviets were very aware of the American atomic project and had an extensive spy ring that penetrated the ring of information, despite the American efforts to keep the project top secret. Though the cold war, by common belief, had technically not began yet, the tension between the two countries had already begun in the race to create the first atomic weapon. As said by Kate Brown, “Intelligence on the American bomb hurtled Soviet and American leaders towards postwar rivalries on the cusp of their joint victory.” This was a period of time that was largely focused on the relationship that the United States had with Germany and Japan in the Second World War, not one focused on the bubbling relationship with the Soviets. Though this early rivalry could easily be marked as the beginning of the high tensions and the race towards the atomic bomb becoming an identifying marker of the Cold War. The interactions and the competition to be the first country with an atomic weapon is what drove the United States success, which is often attributed to the sole intelligence of the

Though there are multiple other sides to the Manhattan Projects that get left untold which Kate Brown in her novel, Plutopia, has decided to focus on the less broadcasted factors of the Manhattan project. She presents the American labor force who were left dangerously uneducated about their job that would later prove detrimental, and also connects the Soviet and American competition to create atomic weapons as essential to the success of the United States atomic bombs. She highlights the American dependency outside of the government and elite upon the blue-collar workers and the outside