The Fourth State Of Matter Summary

In “The Fourth State of Matter” Jo Ann Beard portrays a perspective of the shooting of the physics department at the University of Iowa that not everyone knows about. A look at the relationships and some of the tension with the shooter and the people the shooter interacted with. The man responsible for the shooting at the University of Iowa was a Chinese doctoral student who worked in the physics department with the people he had shot, and the shooter was referred as Gang Lu. Ever since Lu had been working there, he had never enjoyed the company and presence of his fellow co-workers. As Beard describes Lu, “Gang Lu looks around the room with expressionless eyes. He’s sick of physics and sick of the buffoons who practice it” (Beard 7). When Beard describes this about Lu, one can tell he does not like being around the people he is, and Lu does not have any real emotion when he is with these people. One can tell that Lu potentially despises the others. Lu’s co-workers do not treat him very well either. All

In the letter to his sister, Lu uses some very negative words describing his co-workers. In the letter, Lu describes how all his life, he had been honest and straightforward all his life, and that Lu’s co-workers are not the same, and that his co-workers do not treat Lu very well. As Beard described the letter, “all my life I have been honest and straightforward, and I have most of all detested cunning, fawning sycophants and dishonest bureaucrats who think they are always right in everything” (8) In Lu’s letter to his sister, all Lu talks about is how the co-workers are not very good human beings, morally speaking. Lu thinks that his co-workers are not honest, and full of themselves. In “The Fourth State of Matter” Beard gives the readers a perspective of the shooting that not everyone gets to see. A sense of the relationship that the shooter shared with the people he