Rachel Carson A Fable For Tomorrow Analysis

Literary devices are tools that help transform words that captures readers' attentions, and it takes an effective writer to do that. Rachel Carson's "A Fable For Tomorrow" demonstrates the skill of literary devices in which she uses many times and many ways. In the story, Carson describes a certain town that appears to be very tranquil and plentiful but only to have all of it taken away and turned into a dreary, quiet city. Ms. Carson particularly engages her readers through her the literary devices because of her skillful diction and clear symbolism.

First of all, Rachel Carson captivates her readers through her use of descriptive word choices. By doing so, she allows readers to understand and visualize the scene she is trying to express by setting the tone for the environment using imagery. A few specific phrases that Carson uses to describe the town in the beginning is,” a checkerboard field” describing the plentiful farms. She also uses the description, “maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines” to explain how beautiful the colors of fall was. However, as appealing as the first town may seem, Carson was also able to use her skill to describe a drearier town. She used descriptions such as,” mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens” to showcase an ominous mood that changes animals' behaviors. In addition to that, Carson used,” There was a strange stillness,” to

describe the quietness the town was experiencing. Her choice of words helped set the tone of the different parts of the story and added flavor into the text which prevents bland descriptions. However, her use of diction and imagery also allowed her to make it easier to contrast between the town during the separate time periods. One way that Carson uses diction and imagery together to contrast the two settings is when describing the birds,their behavior, and their environment. One description is,” Even in winter the road- sides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow.” From reading this, a reader can automatically tell that this was a lively town. Meanwhile, the description,” The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly.” describes a lifeless town. Overall, the use of diction and imagery Carson uses helps engage readers by transporting them into her fictional world.

Another important literary device that Carson uses in her writing to captivate her readers is her effective symbolism. She uses symbolism to keep her readers on their toes while reading. This is an important factor to writing a story because by keeping the reader's thinking and interpreting it allows their interest to grow. In this case, Carson uses symbolism a few ways to connect her story with the real world. In this case, the idealistic town symbolizes for how our world is today and the dreary town symbolizes the world in the future if we don’t take care of it. Carson makes a connection with her book to our world by saying how Earth may seem plentiful, beautiful, and lively but if we keep using up the resources and not taking care of our planet it may turn into the description of her changed community. This concept was revealed towards the last paragraph of the story when Carson said, ”This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere…” I was able to make this connection through reading the story carefully a few times to get a different perspective. In general, the use of symbolism made the story have more depth and meaning by adding more complex ideas that the readers continue thinking about even after finishing the story.

In conclusion, I believe that Rachel Carson helped engage her readers very well through her descriptive vocabulary and unique symbolism.

With her use of diction, she creates an easy way to understand the mood of her story at different times. She was also able to make the settings more visual for the readers to imagine. By using symbolism she added more depth to her story allowing readers to discover new things every time they read it. Carson’s style of writing is very effective and it was shown through her piece,” A Fable For

Tomorrow”.