Analysis Of Carson's The Obligation To Endure

Think about a time when you’ve argued with someone. Besides perhaps the screaming and the yelling how do you try to win over the person you’re arguing with? Usually with examples or facts right? Well, that’s exactly what Carson did when she wrote The Obligation to Endure. It’s not always about having the facts, but how you present them and how you share the information you have. Carson was very crafty in the ways she presented her arguments and she always made sure she had the evidence to back up her claim. Carson begins her argument by first comparing chemicals released from a bomb “Strontium 90, released through nuclear explosions into the air, comes to earth in rain or drifts down as fallout” and then relates them to the use of pesticides,

She continues to make us question our decisions on the use of pesticides by telling us more about how it will eventually “contaminate the entire environment” and bring on the “threat of disease and death” (Carson 360). However, she backs up her claim by giving us some facts. She points out that the real problem is overproduction and goes on to say that “our farms, despite measures to remove acreages from production and to pay farmers not to produce, have yielded such a staggering excess of crops that the American taxpayer in 1962 is paying out more than one billion dollars a year as the totally carrying cost of the surplus-food storage program” (Carson 361). Carson gives us examples of how this product we’re using is actually costing us more than we may think in ways we probably didn’t even imagine. Her tone goes to be more lighthearted explaining that she doesn’t think that there is no insect problem just that we need to figure out a better way to control it, “all this is not to say there is no insect problem and no need of control. I am saying, rather, that control must be gathered to realities, not to mythical situations, and that the methods employed must be such that they do not destroy us along with the insects.” (Carson 361). She says that “I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons