Rachel Carson Silent Spring Analysis

Rachel Carson’s work Silent Spring, while it dramatizes the situation and events, also provides information on how society has suffered losses from the use of pesticides in recent years. She focuses highly on the irreversible damage to wildlife and the danger these new pesticides pose to humans. With Carson’s background and knack for writing, this piece was excellently written to exact a specific response from the uninformed reader. This piece does a bit of a poor job at balancing the gains and losses between pesticides and the welfare to humankind. Her purpose appears more wavering towards an impassioned plea for action against the use of these new insecticides than an informed piece striving to enlighten the population.

Many of the sources documented in her piece are unreliable. These “cases” were accidents, resulting from careless acts of one or more persons involved. In other cases, the damage to local wildlife was the failure of those who used the pesticide without the consideration of the effects it might have. The way the piece is written evokes a certain response from the reader and her approach has resulted in a wider understanding of the simple fact that these are chemicals, poisons, we are using when spraying pesticides. More importantly, the population may understand the more careful approach and control in every step of the way these poisons must travel, from research to laboratory to government approval to being used in the field.

The advancement in chemical technology with these improved pesticides has created improvements in the public health as well. From this, perhaps, we have become careless in our use and control of them. While there are many positive points, there are also extreme risks involved in using th...

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...d and as such has been attacked with much vivacity to rid of it.

There are values to be had with the new pesticides in terms of human welfare. Carson neglects these benefits quite determinedly throughout her work. She neglects to mention that the average human life has steadily increased in length or the important role modern pesticides has been in the production of food. Modern agriculture has also benefited from this new technology. Of course if pesticides were regulated things may run a bit more smoothly, however, once regulated there runs the risk of not enough pesticides being used and certain species either adapting or becoming more dominent with their predators diminishing. Perhaps even more bacteria would be produced should pesticides be used less. We could end up facing a new age of nature’s baterial and viral weaponry that we simply cannot afford to face.