Argument In Vasily Nesterenko's 'Amazed By Sadness'

The third part of this book is the essential element of this form and function argument. It is entitled “Part Three: Amazed by Sadness”. This section of the novel explores the facts and takes a more serious and analytical tone about the incident. For example, one section within this part of the novel is entitled “About the Facts”. Vasily Nesterenko, the former director of the Institute for Nuclear Energy at the Belarussian Academy of Science tells about his reaction to the incident, and he includes more facts than we have seen thus far in the novel. He talks about how he tried to call the the First secretary of the Central Committee, but no one would listen to him. Desperately, he insisted that no one should be within 100 kilometers of Chernobyl, but his findings

The rest of his passage explains why no one knew what was actually happening: the government did not want to cause a panic. Not to mention, no one truly knew how bad the situation at Chernobyl was. There was a complete lack of information and science available. This passage alone within the greater whole of part three summarizes the situation. There was in fact information available, albeit very small amounts of information; there were steps that the government could take to prevent more people from being exposed to the radiation. However, they did not do anything to help. These facts and figures were all missing from the first two sections of the novel, and for good reason. The people being interviewed did not know these facts. The majority of them did not even know what radiation was. By removing these facts and placing them at the conclusion of the novel, we see the events at Chernobyl unfold in the same manner in which they did in real life. Indeed, it has now become clear that Alexeivich was creating a form to match the function of the