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book review essay of the hot zone
The hot zone summary
book review essay of the hot zone
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Thomas Clontz
1st Period
1/14/14
The Hot Zone Summary
I acknowledge this is the final copy of my own original work and all resources have been cited appropriately.
The novel, “The Hot Zone”, by Richard Preston, is an extraordinary tale about a virus called the Ebola virus. The author interviews a number of different people that all had encounters with the virus and records their stories. He is very interested by what they tell him and throughout the novel he is always seeking to find more information about it. There were many different encounters in this book but in my summary I am going to explain the ones that interested me the most.
The story begins with a man by the name of Charles Monet. He is in Kenya working on a sugar plantation. One of his friends and him decide to take a trip to Mount Elgon and visit the Kitum Cave. A couple of days after he returns from his trip he becomes very ill. He experiences headaches and backaches for several days before spiking a fever and violently vomiting for a long time. His eyes change to a bloodshot red color and he loses all expressions from his face. His personality also dramatically changed. Doctors try to treat him but with no success so he was put on a plane to go to the Nairobi Hospital. During the flight he gets so sick that he throws up huge amounts of red puke with black specks in it. He begins to bleed from his nose and eventually from almost every opening in his body. By the time he reaches the hospital he “crashes” and falls to the floor in a pool of his virus infected blood.
Another aspect of the story is associated with Major Nancy Jaax. She is a member of USAMRIID or United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. USAMRIID does research on different w...
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...animal was sedated before it could hurt her.
On Friday, December 7, the last monkey was finally put down. After this the decon team arrives. They seal off the building and heat these special crystals that kill everything that is living. Also, the team learns that Milton Frantig, the employee who had fallen ill, had recovered from what seemed to be the flu.
Ending this story the author, Richard Preston travels to Africa on his own to see the Kitum Cave and other sites that were mentioned throughout the novel. Finally, the author visits the monkey house in Reston which is now abandoned.
This novel was an incredible journey of a virus from its origin and to what it became as it was passed from host to host. I learned how a virus can adapt and form different strands which can cause it to become more deadly. This was an extraordinary story and incredibly informative.
...virus that spreads easily is a combination that nobody wants. Everyone should care about this message in the book, because they could possibly come in contact with this virus one day.
Monkey than goes on to search for his immortality than is lead to getting weapons where he turns the weapons into a hatpin which helps lead him to his immortality. Throughout the novel. Keeps trying to find the Western paradise he faces many obstacles he ends up going back where he started and try for a second time. Where the second time he than he succeeds in the Journey to the West and has faced many obstacles in trying to get there.
The Hot Zone is a true story of how Bio-safety level 4 hot agents have affected the lives of different people. The first incident is about Charles Monet a water-pump machinist at a sugar factory in Kenya, who went exploring with a friend in Kitman Cave; sixteen days later he lay dead in an intensive care unit. He bled out from every orifice in his body, his kidneys and liver destroyed, partially liquefied, his insides were that of a corpse. The cause of death was undetermined. Ten days after treating Monet, Dr. Muskoe falls ill.. Monet had vomited a black, bloody coffee ground substance all over him. The vomit had gotten into his eyes and even into his mouth. After several futile attempts to cure and diagnose himself he finally seeks the help of his physician. After exploratory surgery yielded no diagnosis Muskoe's physician suspects a virus. He sends a sample of Muskoe's blood to the National Institute of Virology and to the CDC. Muskoe's blood is positive for the filovirus Marsburg, a deadly sister to Ebola virus. Muskoe miraculously survives.
Johnson’s story follows the journeys of characters we come to know well and their reactions to the cholera outbreak. Our interest is kept by the ongoing revelation of important information, and the developing conflict between a major character and his view of the epidemic versus that of majority of others, both in the scientific community and the population at large. He keeps us guessing about how and if the mystery will be solved and at the same time recreates a world that is completely unknown to us.
For those infected, skin glistens with sweat, hair hangs from the weight of dampness, and faces flush with fever. He shows the dead with a pale green cast, staring straight ahead with vomit drying to their faces. To illustrate the virus’ spread, he frames scenes at hand-level showing fingers pushing elevator buttons, gripping poles on public transportation, passing water glasses, and signing paperwork. This element of cinematography highlights society’s vulnerability to the invisibility of the virus due to its rapid spread via common
The medical field is a vast land of beauty but with great beauty comes immense horror. There are many deadly viruses and diseases found in the medical field. In the novel, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, the author discusses the many deadly viruses found in the field. The viruses are widespread due to the errors that occur when the viruses are in the presence of human beings. The effects of the errors performed by the human race include a decrease in population and wildlife. The viruses are spread in many different ways in the novel, but all are due to human mistakes.
The Hot Zone is a true story about how the knowledge of the Ebola virus was first developed and the background behind it. The Ebola virus kills nine out of ten of its victims and it kills quickly and painfully. It is extremely contagious and the blood and vomit the victim lets out can spread the virus quickly. The Hot Zone goes into detail of the experience of getting to the bottom of the Ebola Virus.
In Michael Crichton’s book, The Andromeda Strain, an unknown bacteria was found on a satellite sent by the military to space. This bacteria invaded the town of Piedmont, Arizona and killed all but two: a baby and an old man. A team of four men: Dr. Jeremy Stone, a scientist and the leader of Wildlife; Dr. Mark Hall, a surgeon; Dr. Charles Burton, a pathologist and professor at Baylor Medical School; and Dr. Peter Leavitt, a microbiologist that treats infectious diseases, worked at a secret government facility in Nevada called Project Wildfire to study the “Andromeda Strain,” and figure out what is killing the people in Piedmont. This story took place over a five day period.
Imagine walking into a tiny village in Africa, suffering and dying from some unknown virus. As you approach the huts you hear the wails of pure agony from the afflicted tribe members. Coming closer, you smell the stench of vomit mixed with the bitter smell of warm blood. People inside lay dying in pools of their own vital fluids, coughing and vomiting up their own liquefied internal organs; their faces emotionless masks loosely hanging from their skulls, the connective tissue and collagen in their bodies turned to mush. Their skin bubbled up into a sea of tiny white blisters and spontaneous rips occurring at the slightest touch, pouring blood that refuses to coagulate. Hemmorging and massive clotting underneath the skin causing black and blue bruises all over the body. Their mouths bleeding around their teeth from hemorrhaging saliva glands and the sloughing off of their own tongues, throat lining, and wind pipe, crying tears of pure blood from hemorrhaging tear ducts and the disintegration of the eyeball lining and bleeding from every opening on the body. You see the blood spattered room and pools of black vomit, expelled during the epileptic convulsions that accompany the last stages of death. Their hearts have bled into themselves, heart muscles softened and hemorrhaging , the brain clogged with dead blood cells (sludging of the brain), the liver bulging and yellow with deep cracks and the spleen a single hard blood clot. Babies with bloody noses born with red eyes lay dead from spontaneous abortions of affected mothers. It is the human slate-wiper, the invisible ultimate death, the filovirus named Ebola.
Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a viral disease that was first recorded in 1976, when an outbreak occurred in Yambuku, Zaire, a country that was latter renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo (Walsh, Biek & Real, 2005). During the outbreak 318 cases were recorded of which 280 (88%) died. Later the same year, an outbreak occurred in Sudan where 284 cases were recorded with fatality rate of 53%. The disease and the virus that cause it are named after River Ebola that passes though Yambuku. In the USA, Ebola killed several monkeys in Reston, Virginia in 1989 (Barton, 2006; CDC, 2000). Despite several other outbreaks, the disease has neither medically approved pre-exposure nor post-exposure interventions. However, ongoing research shows optimistic signs.
The book jumps to a distressing story about Peter Los in 1970 in West Germany who became ill due to smallpox. After ten days he was hospitalized but medical staff did not realize he had smallpox, which is highly contagious. Preston gives vivid descriptions of the disease and how it ravages the body. Los survived his illness, but caused an epidemic that killed many others that had become exposed to him. “Today, the people who plan for a smallpox emergency can’t get the image of the Meschede hospital out of their minds.
In 1976 the first two Ebola outbreaks were recorded. In Zaire and western Sudan five hundred and fifty people reported the horrible disease. Of the five hundred and fifty reported three hundred and forty innocent people died. Again in 1995 Ebola reportedly broke out in Zaire, this time infecting over two hundred and killing one hundred and sixty. (Bib4, Musilam, 1)
Despite all, their love was not strong enough to fight against the plague. They had prayed every night for help for Alice, but shortly they all fell ill. Together they experienced nausea and violently vomited. They began to swell; hard, painful, burning lumps on their neck, arms and thighs then appeared. Their bumps had turned black, split open and began to ooze yellow, thick puss and blood. They were decaying on the inside; anything that would come out of their bodies would contain blood and soon puddles of blood formed under their skin. They slowing withered away together. The home became repulsing; the flowers in their yard could no longer mask the smells of their rotting bodies and revolting bodily fluids. Alice was the first to leave, then John, Mama, and Papa followed. Together they all fell victim to the Black Plague.
Suspense; Suspense is the intense feeling that an audience goes through while waiting for the outcome of certain events. It basically leaves the reader holding their breath and wanting more information. The amount of intensity in a suspenseful moment is why it is hard to put a book down. Without suspense, a reader would lose interest quickly in any story because there is nothing that is making the reader ask, “What’s going to happen next?” In writing, there has to be a series of events that leads to a climax that captivates the audience and makes them tense and anxious to know what is going to happen. And Suspense, is what “August heat” primarily uses to keep its story so invigorating.
"The Plague." Novels for Students. Ed. David M. Galens. Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale, 2002. 202-222. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 3 Apr. 2011.