Comparison Of Silent Springs And If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth

People Affect the Future

(Comparing my views and thoughts on the stories “Silent Springs” and “If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth…”)

As a society, we focus some of our thoughts on how to preserve the Earth and different ways to recycle and keep it clean. Although we do have an effort into saving our home planet, we, as a whole race, don’t have our hearts in it. There are the people who are obsessive economists and worry about the world excessively and those who don’t care enough or at all. The two stories both present a possible outcome for our lack of effort in preserving the Earth in two different genres, fiction and nonfiction. Of the two stories “Silent Spring” and “If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth…”, the one i felt most affected by was Marvin in, “If

I Forget Thee, Oh Earth...”, I also thought the nonfiction portrays the message more clearly, and possible reasons why the authors chose the genre they chose.
The story, “If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth...” affected me more on a personal level than “Silent Spring” because of Marvin’s actually thoughts and feelings on his current situation. In the beginning, Marvin is oblivious to the fact that there once was life on Earth and that it was the human’s fault that they can no longer inhabit there and were forced to colonize. It baffled me to think that it’s possible that in the future children won’t even realize we ever lived and existed on Earth. His complete innocence made me realize that we really do need to take care of our Earth because it won’t last forever and we need to make it last as long as possible. Marvin had never seen the stars and when he finally does, he doesn’t understand why people claim that they “twinkle”. “And what did they mean “twinkle”? You could see at a glance that all the stars shone with the same steady, unwavering light.” (Clarke, Page 163.) We know, however, that from Earth it can appear that the stars are twinkling and that’s where that expression came from. After Marvin’s father tells him more about Earth, he is intrigued by the thought of sounds like rain and the sight of snow which seems crazy to us since we all know those things well. If you take into consideration that Marvin never actually experienced those things and possibly never will, it is somewhat upsetting since the moral of the story is that us humans messed all of that up be being inconsiderate of our home planet. Although Marvin is upset that he’ll never know those sounds, I loved how he had hope and was optimistic about his thoughts and dreams for his future children.
Different genres are chosen by each author, fiction versus nonfiction, to attempt to express ideas effectively and I think nonfiction is the better way to express the idea that these stories display.

The nonfiction story, “Silent Spring” expresses the idea of how we can change the future of the Earth by destroying it with pollution and not taking care and preserving it. “Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients.” (Carson Page 168) Those few sentences catch attention of the readers and make them ponder what happened to the town and why it is the way it is. We all know from reading the whole story that this town is fictional, but the thought of it intrigued more people to have the desire to take care and clean up the Earth. If we were to all take part in the help to keep our Earth clean and waste as little as possible, it will be far off in the future before towns like this ever exist. That change is something we need to make, yet the majority has no motivation to take a step in doing so. The nonfiction atmosphere of this story makes the facts and predictions in the story more straight forward on why we need to change rather than the fiction since it isn’t true and is less believable. The fact that nonfiction is blunt in saying what needs to happen and why is the main reason it is more effective in expressing the

ideas.
The purpose behind each author's choice of genre is another intriguing thought and some possible reasons why may be the age group they want to appeal to. If you are trying to convince younger children to start now with helping clean the Earth, then you need to tell what we, as humans, are failing to do right and make a character to help them understand. The fiction genre that was chosen by Clarke attaches the reader to Marvin and makes them want to share simple experiences with him that he won’t get to since they are colonized on the moon because of the actions we made that destroyed Earth and made it uninhabitable. Another positive thing about fiction is that it shows a character's person feelings on a certain idea and their hopes and wishes for change. Both genres show effectively how we are currently affecting future generation with our decisions in our everyday lives. The nonfiction genre may have been chosen because they can just state facts straight forward and show the possible future outcomes in a realistic way. “Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them” (Carson page 170) the way nonfiction can state things like that makes it effective in the sense that it causes people to think twice abouta what they are doing each and everyday.
The two stories both affected me, but I was more affected by Marvin even though I think nonfiction is more effective in expressing ideas, and made me think of possible reasons that each other chose the genre that they did. Both stories have somewhat the same meaning and purpose behind them, by the way that each other chose to change and edit how they say what they want to say changes the way the audience reacts to them. The fiction story makes us want to help prevent people like Marvin from never knowing sound of rain and such small pleasures that we take for granted. While the fiction attaches us to a character, the nonfiction makes us ponder on if we should take the economists seriously and participate in helping the Earth rather than helping destroy and pollute it.